The Story Archive

Ring Roads

Patrick Modiano · 1972 CE · Novel · French · Contemporary

A photograph taken ten years earlier shows three men on the terrace of an inn outside Paris, and one of them is the father who once tried to push the narrator under a métro train. He finds the place, gives a false name, and attaches himself to the collaborationist crowd around a scandal-sheet publisher in order to stay near the fat, evasive man who will not admit to knowing him. It took the Prix du roman de l'Académie française and closed what Gallimard later collected as the Occupation Trilogy.

Open Ring Roads in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Lineage

Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalMystery
Theme
BetrayalIdentity & SelfMemory & TimeLoyaltyWar & Violence
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
WandererAnti-Hero
Plot structure
Nonlinear / FracturedFrame Narrative
Symbol / motif
The PortraitThe MaskThe City
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
NoirElegiac
Culture / tradition
French

Closest analogues