Someone’s Trying to Find You

As he leaves the cinema where he has just watched Casablanca, one of his favorite films, Julien is approached by a mysterious young woman, Claire. Unbeknownst to Julien, Claire has been following him for several days. Outside the cinema she relays a cryptic message: Someone’s trying to find you. She insists that as a practitioner of the little-known science of narrative psychology she is acting as the anonymous individual’s intermediary.

Slowly, Julien allows himself to be sucked into Claire’s investigation, and a strange odyssey through his past ensues. In this novel by Marc Auge, a master of ethnofiction, the two meet up in Paris cafes to discuss the events of their lives - Occupation and Liberation, the Algerian War, and 1968- and Julien puzzles over who in his past could be searching for him. His ex-wife? An enigmatic lover from a seedy corner of Berlin? Soon, Julien realizes he is in the midst of a mysterious game of confession with a woman he knows nothing about. In a quick reversal, he shines the spotlight on Claire. Who is she, and why are her questions so intense? Why does she seem focused on one particular year - 1968?

As the story unravels, we begin to understand that the puzzling nature of Claire’s quest proves to be a metaphor for other enigmas, including the mysteries of the heart. Beautifully written, Someone’s Trying to Find You is a haunting addition to Seagull’s French List, and it should not be missed.