This paper analyzes Patrick Modiano’s Dora Bruder (1997) and W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001) in conjunction with urban topography and attempts by the novels’ respective narrators to learn the fate of two individuals who disappeared in Paris, one in 1941 and the other sometime following the 1940-1944 German Occupation. What draws me to these two narratives is the fact that both contain key passages describing specific neighborhoods of the capital--the 12th and 18th arrondissements in Dora Bruder and the 13th arrondissement in Austerlitz. In addition, both include black and white photographs in conjunction with urban topographies whose precedents I find in Louis Aragon’s Paysan de Paris (1926) and André Breton’s Nadja (1928). The fact that only the English-language translation of Dora Bruder contains photographs problematizes the interaction in terms of a process of writing I explore as a figurative combination of strolling (flânerie) and wandering (errance).