Patrick Modiano Wins the Nobel Prize in Literature

Patrick Modiano has won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature for his lifetime body of work. A French writer, he was relatively unknown outside of France until now. Many of his books are about the French experience during World War II, and he co-wrote a screenplay for Louis Malle's classic movie Lacombe Lucien about a troubled teenage boy during the Occupation. Modiano has also written lyrics for French singer Francoise Hardy. Sounds like a possible first for a Nobel winner.

But what about his books? The Washington Post reports that Peter Englund, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy (which awards the Nobel prize), recommends that readers looking for a place to start begin with Missing Person, a 1978 Prix Goncourt-winning novel. At once a detective novel and a meditation on France during the war, it tells the story of a man who's lost his memory and searches for his identity during the Paris Occupation.

According to the Financial Times, Englund also said, "You could say he’s a Marcel Proust of our time… They are small books – 130, 150 pages – which are always variations of the same theme: memory, loss, identity, seeking.”

The forthcoming new translation Suspended Sentences is being hurried into print sooner than planned, thanks to the Nobel Prize. The library will have that on order very soon. The publisher describes the book: "Shadowed by the dark period of the Nazi Occupation, these novellas reveal Modiano's fascination with the lost, obscure or mysterious: a young person's confusion over adult behavior; the repercussions of a chance encounter; the search for a missing father; the aftershock of a fatal affair."

Modiano also written a sophisticated children's book, Catherine Certitude, about a child whose mother is a dancer and whose beloved father is involved in some shady business. With lovely New Yorker-like illustrations, it's likely to charm adult readers at least as much as children.

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Alice Munro last year. The last American to win was Toni Morrison in 1993. A full list of past winners is available online.

Update: more coverage from the Washington Post and the New York Times. Also, tired of getting caught off guard by these announcements? Want to get familiar with likely Nobel candidates before they win? Believe it or not, people bet on these things, and Publishers Weekly rounded up some of the top contenders: you may want to start reading the work of Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, too.