Most Sundays I am in luck while looking for books at Abids and regularly land some good titles. But on some Sundays I am extra-lucky. Last Sunday turned out to be one such Sunday. Though I found only two books they were titles by authors normally difficult to find, especially an author not many had heard of until last year. When it was announced in November last that he had won the Nobel Prize in Literature no one seemed to know much about Patrick Modiano. At that time I had thought that it would be tough, if not impossible, to find any book by Patrick Modiano since he happened to write in French. Of course, I had forgotten about it all until last Sunday.
It was at Chikkadpally, on the way back home that I spotted a copy of ‘The Search Warrant’ by Patrick Modiano. I would have missed finding it had I not looked at the name a second time after retrieving the book from under another bulky book where it was almost hidden. ‘The Search Warrant’ is a slim volume, just 137 pages long and the copy I found was in beautiful condition and appeared to be almost new. However, there was a small bit missing from a few pages and it looked like a termite job. I did not mind it because it is impossible to find a secondhand copy of a book by someone like Patrick Modiano. I felt lucky finding it and luckier still that I had paid only fifty rupees for it.
At Abids, before I found ‘The Search Warrant’ I had picked up another copy by another writer who is likely to win the Nobel in the near future, maybe this year. I found a good copy of Haruki Murakami’s ‘Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman’ that I managed to buy for only fifty rupees. It is a collection of 24 short stories and this is the second copy I have with me. Long back I had found a hard cover copy of this same title at Abids and I had got it at a much cheaper price. I paid only twenty rupees for this wonderful collection of short stories by Murakami.
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