"I opened the book out of curiosity and could not stop reading until the end. The Madeleine Project is a wonderfully original and, for the author, a clearly obsessive project which resuscitates an ordinary life in an extraordinary way. It's as if Clara met Madeleine's ghost in the cellar and embarked on a long and illuminating conversation with her."

Alan Riding, former correspondent for The New York Times and author of And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris