Dora Bruder is a biography, an autobiography and a detective novel by French writer Patrick Modiano about a Jewish teenage girl who went missing during the German occupation of Paris.
[2] The book starts when the narrator comes across a missing person ad in the Paris Soir newspaper on 31 December 1941 looking for Dora Bruder.
She was later found in April 1942 but her father, a Jew of Austrian background, had been arrested and sent to the internment camp of Drancy where she will also end up.
Dora Bruder is a typical example of the themes found across Modiano's work such as memory, loss, recovery, time.
[6][7] Across the story, Modiano adds his personal experiences with his father through Dora's interactions with her family, his life in the same neighbourhood or his escape from school when he was 14.