Summary: In La Varenne on the Marne, a brief love affair begins between the photographer and his lover Sylvia, the wife of the shady businessman Frédéric Villecourt, and it ends in Nice on the Côte d'Azur, where Sylvia follows her lover. She carries with her a diamond that she has stolen from her husband. The diamond is called "Southern Cross." In an attempt to sell it, Sylvia mysteriously disappears - like all its previous owners. The first bearer was guillotined in 1793, and the penultimate owner was shot in 1944.

Authors: Modiano, Patrick; Spingler, Andrea (translated by the author): Patrick Jean Modiano was born on July 30, 1945, in Boulogne-Billancourt, the son of a Flemish actress and a Jewish immigrant of Oriental descent. His father lived underground during the German occupation and survived through black market dealings. Modiano experienced a chaotic post-war childhood: frequent absences of his mother, the early death of his brother, and the separation of his parents. He dedicated himself to writing at an early age and completed his first novel by the age of 21. Since then, he has published numerous novels, children's books, as well as plays and screenplays. In 2014, Modiano was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The author lives in Paris.

Andrea Spingler, born in 1949 in Stuttgart, has been working as a freelance translator since 1980. She has translated works by Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Patrick Modiano, Jean-Paul Sartre, and André Gide into German, among others. In 2007, she received the Eugen Helmlé Prize for outstanding German-French translations, and in 2012, the Prix lémanique de la traduction. She lives in Oldenburg and southern France.