At a brief ceremony in Stockholm on October 9, Patrick Modiano was named the 111th winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
The 69-year-old is the 15th French writer to win the prestigious prize, worth $1.1 million. His name was announced in the ceremony with Peter Englund, the Nobel Academy’s permanent secretary, reading a citation which said Modiano won "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation," the Guardian reported.
Modiano is well known in France but 'something of an unknown' for even widely read people in other countries. His best known novel is probably 'Missing Person', which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1978 and is about a detective who loses his memory and endeavors to find it.
Media Shy
The writer was born in a west Paris suburb two months after the Second World War ended in Europe in July 1945. Modiano, who lives in Paris now, is known to shun the media, and rarely accords interviews. In 2012, he won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. Englund said: "Modiano is a well-known name in France but not anywhere else. He writes children’s books, movie scripts but mainly novels. His themes are memory, identity and time."
The winner is chosen by an academy consisting of 18 prominent Swedish literary figures. This year 210 nominations were received, 36 of which were first timers. That became a 20-name long list and then a five-name shortlist.
