This novel by Nobel Prize winning author Patrick Modiano is one of the most sedu
ctive and accessible in his oeuvre: the story of a man s memories of fleeing res
ponsibility, finding love, and searching for meaning in an uncertain world
The
narrator of "Villa Triste," an anxious, roving, stateless young man of eighteen
, arrives in a small French lakeside town near Switzerland in the early 1960s. H
e is fleeing the atmosphere of menace he feels around him and the fear that grip
s him. Fear of war? Of imminent catastrophe? Of others? Whatever it may be, the
proximity of Switzerland, to which he plans to run at the first sign of danger,
gives him temporary reassurance.
