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 Augé, 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.