Patrick Modiano, recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, has made French Jewry, and the Holocaust, the main subjects of his four-decade literary career. Much of his work has been informed by the experiences of his own father, a Salonikan Jew who survived the war as a collaborator. Modiano’s work helped push France toward coming to grips with its own participation in the murder of its Jews, writes Clémence Boulouque:

With his hallucinatory debut and the two books that followed, also centered on the Occupation and first-person accounts of traitors or sons of collaborators, Modiano signaled a shift in the Zeitgeist and subsequent self-perception of France. La Place de l’Etoile came out a few months before Marcel Ophuls’s movie The Sorrow and the Pity, which dealt with the complex question of passivity and collaboration in the small town of Clermont-Ferrand—a microcosm of France. Robert O. Paxton’s Vichy France was published in 1972. France had embarked on a soul-searching journey about the country’s wartime past, and Modiano’s work was a key part of the ousting of the postwar myth of a “nation of resisters” and the ushering in of an era of gray zones and elusive moral clarity.

For more than a year, the Iran-backed Houthis have been launching drones and missiles at ships traversing the Red Sea, as well as at Israeli territory, in support of Hamas. This development has drastically curtailed shipping through the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, driving up trade prices. This week, the Trump administration began an extensive bombing campaign against the Houthis in an effort to reopen that crucial waterway. Burcu Ozcelik highlights another benefit of this action:

The administration has a broader geopolitical agenda—one that includes countering China’s economic leverage, particularly Beijing’s reliance on Iranian oil. By targeting the Houthis, the United States is not only safeguarding vital shipping lanes but also exerting pressure on the Iran-China energy nexus, a key component of Beijing’s strategic posture in the region.

China was the primary destination for up to 90 percent of Iran’s oil exports in 2024, underscoring the deepening economic ties between Beijing and Tehran despite U.S. sanctions. By helping fill Iranian coffers, China aids Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in financing proxies like the Houthis. Since October of last year, notable U.S. Treasury announcements have revealed covert links between China and the Houthis.

Striking the Houthis could trigger broader repercussions—not least by disrupting the flow of Iranian oil to China. While difficult to confirm, it is conceivable and has been reported, that the Houthis may have received financial or other forms of compensation from China (such as Chinese-made military components) in exchange for allowing freedom of passage for China-affiliated vessels in the Red Sea.