Collaboration and Resistance Reviewed Writers and 'la Mode Rétro' in Post-Gaullist France

Ch. 5 (p. 144-178), "Patrick Modiano", discusses the novels of the French writer (born in 1945, of a Jewish father) on the occupation period. Modiano typifies the "retro" mode of the late 1960s and 1970s which set out to reevaluate or contest the French myth of the Resistance. In his novel "La Place de l'Étoile" (1968), Modiano suggests the anti-Jewish atmosphere and feelings in French society through its anti-hero, Raphael Schlemilovitch, an embodiment of the archetypal Jew, molded on antisemitic prejudices circulating in the Vichy period.