Reading Patrick Modiano's The Black Notebook as a Topographical Crime Novel

Abstract

This paper provides a new reading of Patrick Modiano's The Black Notebook (2016) as a topographical crime novel. This new reading adds strength to the perspective which believes that the literary genre of crime fiction has evolved over the past decades in its narrative subject matter, and many crime novels have conveyed local and topographical knowledge about their settings. 1960s Paris is the setting of Modiano’s The Black Notebook since the city is his birth place and source of inspiration. Therefore, Modiano dedicates his novel to exploring the secretive life of the city and its urban topography. The Black Notebook is a long meditation on the topographical features, whether natural or man-made, of 1960s Paris, and this study alters the critical conversation about Modiano's novel and shows how it characteristically typifies the evolution of the literary genre from a fiction of crime into a fiction of touristic, topographical and geographic orientation