Four years after the Nobel Prize: Patrick Modiano's new masterpiece of his art of memory. The father meets with dubious Russians on the black market, while the mother works as an actress in Pigalle. The son, left to fend for himself in Paris, interacts with enigmatic women: Madeleine Peraud, an expert in esotericism, with whom he shares a love for certain books, offers him a place to stay. Madame Hubersen, who spends the hot summer day drinking schnapps in a café, is someone he is supposed to take home in the evening. With a third, nameless woman, who has shot a man in a strange apartment at night, he will flee and help her cover up the traces. Fifty years later, the narrator attempts to piece together his childhood memories like parts of a puzzle, blending, in Modiano's inimitable style, dream and reality, fact and fiction.