Sounds quite Pynchon-like, GR especially. And 1968! any lister read? just coming in English.

[Mark Kohut]

La place de l’étoile is Modiano’s most famous book, but also his least
typical: a frenetic, hallucinatory picaresque, jumping abruptly
between time frames, locations and narrative perspectives to leave the
reader dizzy and disoriented. It tells the life and adventures of
Rafael Schlemilovitch, a French Jew born at the end of the war. He is
raised by English governesses and at Swiss boarding schools before a
vast “Venezuelan inheritance” from an uncle allows him to adopt a
grand lifestyle.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l