“Modiano is one of France’s greatest living writers. . . . He imbues his taut, slim novels with the thrill of chasing a mystery.”—Jeanne Bonner, Boston Globe

“Pithy and introspective. . . . Modiano delivers wondrous images of the tricks memory plays, sharply translated by Polizzotti. . . . Readers will savor this wistful narrative.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Evoke[s] an unmistakable atmosphere, like an Old Master drawing that captures a scene in a few faint lines. Ballerina is as much about the nameless narrator’s attempt to reconstruct a period as it is about the unnamed dancer.”—Michael Autrey, Booklist

“[A] gift . . . rich, evocative. . . . Set in the world of dance (and oblique existential mysteries) in 1960s Paris.”—Dwyer Murphy, Literary Hub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2025”

Praise for the French Edition:
 
“The most ethereal, slender, and crystal-clear of Patrick Modiano’s beautiful novels.”—Jérôme Garcin, L’Obs
 
“In this novel full of delicate melancholy, dance and writing finally become one.”—Fabienne Lemahieu, La Croix
 
“The memories are hazy and the charm works. Irresistibly. We would like to wander the streets of Paris endlessly with Patrick Modiano.”—Marianne Payot, L’Express
 
“A superb novel. . . . Through the repetition of a sound, a light, the name of a character or a street, Patrick Modiano plunges us into a waking dream-state. He invites us, without saying it, to an adventure akin to mysticism. The past no longer exists: everything, under his pen, becomes ‘eternal present.’”—Julien Burri, Le Temps
 
“A book by Modiano . . . you read it in a kind of incandescence. It’s an event. And then, it vanishes: like a mirage. It eludes explanation, description, it’s just something you feel. It’s pure sensibility. Like music. It’s hard to talk about music. We stammer. . . . He is not the author of the past. He is the author of the eternal present that we feel within us.”—Christine Angot, France Inter