Patrick Modiano, author of Lacombe Lucien, wins the The Swedish Academy award for the Nobel Prize in literature 2014
Patrick Modiano who won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature Photo: Getty Images
French novelist Patrick Modiano has won the 2014 Nobel Prize in literature.
Modiano, the author of Missing Person and Lacombe Lucien – which was made into a film by Louis Malle – was the bookies favourites overnight. He beat a competitive field that included Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Belarusian investigative journalist and author Svetlana Alexievich, and Syrian poet Adonis.
Modiano, 69, published his first novel, La Place de l’Etoile, in 1968; he won the Prix Goncourt in 1978, and over the following three decades he has confirmed his status with a celebrated body of work, including Out of the Dark and Dora Bruder. “Actually, I never thought of doing anything else,” he said of his literary career in 2011 to France Today. “I had no diploma, no definite goal to achieve. But it is tough for a young writer to begin so early. Really, I prefer not to read my early books. Not that I don’t like them, but I don’t recognise myself anymore, like an old actor watching himself as a young leading man.”
Modiano was born in a west Paris suburb two months after World War II ended in Europe in July 1945. His father was of Jewish Italian origins and met his Belgian actress mother during the occupation of Paris – and his beginnings have strongly influenced his writing. The Swedish Academy, which selects Nobel Literature winners, praised Modiano “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation”.
“You could say he’s a Marcel Proust of our time,” Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, added. Modiano’s latest work is the novel “Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier”.
Modiano has also written children’s books, including Catherine Certitude, and was a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival in 2000.
The American authors Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon were once again overlooked for the biggest prize in literature. Modiano takes home eight million kronor (£693,000).
In 2013, the award went to Canadian writer Alice Munro, who was described by the Academy as a “master of the contemporary short story”.
NOBEL LITERATURE WINNERS SINCE 1980
2014: Patrick Modiano, France
2013: Alice Munro, Canada.
2012: Mo Yan, China.
2011: Tomas Transtromer, Sweden.
2010: Mario Vargas Llosa, Peru.
2009: Herta Mueller, Germany.
2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, France.
2007: Doris Lessing, Britain.
2006: Orhan Pamuk, Turkey.
2005: Harold Pinter, Britain.
2004: Elfriede Jelinek, Austria.
2003: J.M. Coetzee, South Africa.
2002: Imre Kertesz, Hungary.
2001: V.S. Naipaul, Trinidad-born Briton.
2000: Gao Xingjian, Chinese-born French.
1999: Guenter Grass, Germany.
1998: Jose Saramago, Portugal.
1997: Dario Fo, Italy.
1996: Wislawa Szymborska, Poland.
1995: Seamus Heaney, Ireland.
1994: Kenzaburo Oe, Japan.
1993: Toni Morrison, United States.
1992: Derek Walcott, St. Lucia.
1991: Nadine Gordimer, South Africa.
1990: Octavio Paz, Mexico.
1989: Camilo Jose Cela, Spain.
1988: Naguib Mahfouz, Egypt.
1987: Joseph Brodsky, Russian-born American.
1986: Wole Soyinka, Nigeria.
1985: Claude Simon, France.
1984: Jaroslav Seifert, Czechoslovakia.
1983: William Golding, Britain.
1982: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia.
1981: Elias Canetti, Bulgarian-born Briton.
1980: Czeslaw Milosz, Polish-born American.
Source: The Telegraph