Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano remains faithful to his muse called Memory. In the new novel, the writer Jean - the author's alter ego - is again looking for a stranger from the past in Paris, past and present. However, unlike Modiano’s previous books, “Sympathetic Ink” is structured like a classic detective story with an unexpected ending. And this time the writer expands his horizons: the search, which began in Paris, will lead the hero to the Eternal City, where the solution to this almost detective story awaits the reader.

...These two contradictory properties of memory have always amazed me, because I , as a writer, I feel an anxious expectation in them: on the one hand, a long-vanished memory suddenly floats to the surface, as if invisible ink appears under the influence of a chemical substance; on the other hand, an unpleasant memory, seemingly erased over time, reappears out of nowhere, like a blackmailer, showing us how much we depend on other “silences” of memory that can sooner or later be broken. Patrick Modiano