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A twisty, slow-burn mystery set in Paris and the Netherlands that has become an international bestseller, now in English for the first time.

In 1989, twenty-year-old Marie jumps at the chance to work as au pair in Paris—even though it means dropping out of her prestigious art program in the Netherlands. The city, the language, and the complicated French family she works for all quickly overshadow the turmoil and pain she'd been reckoning with in school. Even as her experiences with the family in Paris begin to echo the troubles left in the Netherlands, Marie pushes on.

Years later, during the 2015 attacks in Paris, Marie is shocked to recognize her former teacher, and the main reason she fled the Netherlands, pictured in the aftermath of the attacks in the exact arrondissement where her previous employers live. The past she was sure she could leave behind comes flooding back, as do the questions she thought she could live with leaving unanswered.

Told in alternating voices, this “highly ingenious” (NRC) coming-of-age story asks important and haunting questions about the thin line between remembering and recording, seeing and being seen, coincidence and fate, revenge and reclamation—and what it means to walk this boundary.