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French writer Patrick Modiano
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French writer Patrick
Modiano has won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature for works that made him
"a Marcel Proust of our time" with tales often set during the Nazi
occupation of Paris during World War Two, the Swedish Academy said on Thursday.
Reuters reports relatively unknown
outside of France and a media recluse, Modiano's works have centred on memory,
oblivion, identity and guilt. He has written novels, children's books and film
scripts.
"You could say he's
a Marcel Proust of our time," Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the
Swedish Academy, told reporters.
The academy said the
award of 8 million Swedish crowns (US$1.1 million) was "for the art of
memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and
uncovered the life-world of the occupation".
Little of his work is
available in English but his roughly 40 works include "A Trace of
Malice", "Missing Person," and "Honeymoon". His latest
work is the novel "Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier".
Modiano, reacting to the
award, said he felt like he had been writing versions of the same book for many
years.
"What I am keen to
see are the reasons why they chose me ... One can never really be one's own
reader," he told a news conference in Paris. "Even more so because I
have the impression of writing the same book for 45 years."
The writer said he would
dedicate the prize to his Swedish grandson.
French Prime Minister
Manuel Valls said: "He is undoubtedly one of the greatest writers of
recent years, of the early 21st century. This is well-deserved for a writer who
is moreover discreet, as is much of his excellent work."
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