The Search Warrant

First, haven't read a novella that sprang out of pure chance and curiosity as the Search Warrant, and second, it was read mainly because of its author - Patrick Modiano, recipient of 2014 Nobel Prize and no other reason. The story is simple but amusingly crafted.

In December 1988 the author came across an old issue of the Paris Soir of December 1941. It was the headline in page 3 that mentioned the disappearance of a young Jewish girl called Dora Bruder, age 15, height 1.55m, oval-shaped face, and grey-brown eyes, donning a grey sports jacket with a maroon pullover, navy-blue skirt, a hat, and brown gym shoes. And the address given for any information to be sent was to - M and Mme Bruder, 41 Boulevard Ornano, Paris.

Thus begins the hunt for Dora Bruder.

The author was familiar with the area around the Boulevard Ornano and recalled his early days and family life of Paris in the 50's and 60's, so nostalgic elements throughout the whole story creeps in too.

The tale in brief, is about chasing the tracks of Dora Bruder ending inconclusively. The story unfolds as Dora Bruder, a girl of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, who, after running away from the safety of a convent meets her end at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

The whole sequence of events, leading to Dora's landing at Auschwitz  is narrated through a work of fusion or more specifically Search Warrant can be labelled as a literary hybrid. It's essentially, a mix of memory, imagination, investigation, intuition and coincidences. Driven by his passion for the past, Modiano went to a number of listed addresses, searched for relatives and memories; Stitched together newspaper cuttings, vague testimonies, old telephone directories along with police and boarding registers. But the end result, of his attempts, to track down Dora Bruder ends with a predictable sad truth: her untimed death. 

Out of the ordinary here, are his off-beat investigative techniques – often based and guided by a set of intuition as well as sheer elements of clairvoyance.

For instance, having read Hugo's Les Misérables, (I assume for information on Paris), Modiano reaches a trembling moment of clairvoyance.  Hugo's historical Paris, full of actual street names, gives way to an imaginary Paris of Hugo's own. In Hugo's book,  Valjean and Cosette took refuge in an imagined convent - here that moment is intensified further as the author, too,  has the same address (real or imagined) for Dora Bruder's school, the Holy Heart of Mary.

However, His conclusion, what we don't know about Dora after her alleged escape from the convent is the true secret. True, but it feels like too quick a conclusion. Similar to the Missing person Modiano's novels are historical, but based on a single theme and similar subjects:  the heart-rending fate of the Jews, memory of the war, and nearly forgotten secrets being dugout.

An account of the ten-year investigation, said in a dreamy tone, took Modiano back to the sights and past happenings in Paris under German Occupation. But quite fascinatingly, while unearthing Dora Bruder's fate, it was also the author's family history which came in light.

I particularly liked the sympathetic moving portrayal of two (fictional) German writers in the book.

An interesting observation, worth mentioning is that writings which play with the idea of memory, and its imperfections, can be relatively easily translated into other languages. It's not too multifarious a subject. The reason behind not knowing of Modiano before the Nobel Prize is also quite simple – the reclusive writer is not widely read across the globe. Most importantly, most of his works have not been translated until very recently.

Perhaps the most important message delivered in the book, according to this reviewer is:

Simple, swift and shorter lines followed by the consummate skill to let the subject speak for it makes a good and a great book. Search Warrant may not be great as a single piece of work, but it's the style of its storytelling that's arty. The reading feels like as you're there, beside the writer's practical-cum-imaginative hunt for a young Jewish girl during the holocaust.

Modiano's uses of official records, in line with Dora's disappearance are mentioned with the lives of other holocaust survivors that, at times, may appear boring but in general the book is surely worth a read.

Last but not least, is that the Nobel Prize in Literature 2014 was awarded to Patrick Modiano - "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life -world of the occupation". Art of memory for sure, but couldn't agree with the latter part saying ' uncovering of human destinies in the life-world of occupation 'since so many writers , as yet , have uncovered the life-world of occupation times much earlier and much better than Modiano.

Translator Joanna Kilmartin deserves a big hand for her elegant translation of the Search Warrant in English.

Published by Harvill Secker London, the 137 page book is available at Pathok Shomabesh.

The reviewer is a journalist