2014 Nobel Prize for Literature

And it goes this year to

French author Patrick Modiano “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.”

I’ve never heard of the man (what seems to be his most famous book hasn’t been translated into English), and too bad for me, but Matthew will have heard of him since our co-writer has produced two books on the French Resistance, the occupation, and the Liberation of Paris. Modiano’s Wikipedia biography is here; he is 69. A bit of information:

He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014, having previously won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2012 and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca from the Institut de France for his lifetime achievement in 2010. His other awards include the Prix Goncourt in 1978 for his novel Rue des boutiques obscures and the Grand prix du roman de l’Académie française in 1972 for Les Boulevards de ceinture.

. . . His meeting with [Raymond] Queneau, the author of Zazie dans le métro, was crucial. Modiano was introduced to the literary world by Queneau, and this gave him the opportunity to attend a cocktail party given by publishing house Éditions Gallimard. He published his first novel, La Place de l’Étoile, with them in 1968, after having read the manuscript to Raymond Queneau. Starting that year, he did nothing but write.

The 2010 release of the German translation of La Place de l’Étoile won Modiano the German Preis der SWR-Bestenliste (Prize of the Southwest Radio Best-of List) from the Südwestrundfunk radio station, which hails the book as a major Post-Holocaust work. The 42-year delay of the book’s translation to German — surprising in that most of Modiano’s works are translated to that language — is due to its highly controversial and at times satirically antisemitic content. La Place de l’Étoile has not yet been published in English.

I expect Dr. Cobb to weigh in below.