The magic of Modiano consists in the art of introducing elements of reality into the writer's imaginary world, intertwining them so closely that it is no longer possible to distinguish which is the truth of life and which is fiction. Dora Bruder is an exceptional book. The most successful, the most poignant of those written by Patrick Modiano. Jorge Semprun, trying to find out the fate of a Jewish girl who disappeared in the winter of 1941, Modiano reveals one of the most painful pages in the history of Paris. Patrick Modiano (b. 1945) is one of the best writers in France. His books have been awarded many literary prizes, including the Goncourt Prize and the French Academy Prize. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the art of memory, thanks to which he revealed the most incomprehensible human destinies and revealed the human world during the Nazi occupation." The Nobel Committee called Modiano a "modern Proust." It is difficult to say whether such a comparison is legitimate from a purely literary point of view, one thing is certain: these writers are related to the "search for lost time." And Modiano has not stopped searching for his lost time to this day. From the afterword by translator N. Khotinskaya.