French author Patrick Modiano has won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, bringing international attention to an author known for his explorations of memory and loss. (Photo: Getty)
PARIS—French author Patrick Modiano, who has examined memory, identity and loss in the post-war era with elegant and spare prose, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The 69-year-old Paris resident was honored Thursday by the Swedish Academy “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.”
Although his books are celebrated in France—and have been translated into 36 languages—Mr. Modiano isn’t well-known in the U.S. During a packed news conference at his publisher here, Éditions Gallimard, the publicity-shy author said he reacted to the honor with disbelief and then emotion.
“It felt like looking at a double, as if we were celebrating somebody who had my name,” Mr. Modiano said. “I didn’t expect it at all.”
The laureate said he has a special connection with Sweden because his three-year-old grandson is from there. “I dedicate this prize to him since it’s his country,” he said.
The 18 members of the Academy chose a notably accessible writer this year, one who has written children’s books, detective mysteries, screenplays and more than 20 novels. Mr. Modiano co-wrote the script for the 1974 film, “ Lacombe, Lucien,” with director Louis Malle.
In addition to writing for movies, Mr. Modiano has appeared on screen, making a cameo as “Bob” alongside Catherine Deneuve in Raúl Ruiz’s 1997 film “Genealogies of a Crime.”
Patrick Modiano gestures at a news conference in Paris on Thursday. European Pressphoto Agency

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Speaking to reporters after the announcement, Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said that while most of Mr. Modiano’s works don’t run for hundreds of pages, they delve into serious subjects. The author’s signature themes have long haunted France, such as Germany’s occupation during World War II, the Algerian War of Independence and the evolution of Paris over the past century.
Paris is a recurring character in Mr. Modiano’s work. Most of his novels are set in the city, even though the characters often are trying to dodge real or perceived threats by escaping to the French Riviera or Switzerland.
The city’s streets and neighborhoods permeate his landscapes, from the well-heeled parts of downtown Paris to more remote suburbs where the characters try to live anonymous and protected lives. Mr. Modiano told a Nobel Committee interviewer Thursday that he was out walking near the Jardin du Luxembourg when his daughter telephoned and said he had won the prize.
Mr. Modiano was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, near Paris, in 1945, to a Belgian actress and a businessman of Jewish-Italian heritage. His parents met during the German occupation, and those years often make their way into his fiction.
His 1968 debut novel, “La place de l’étoile,” follows a Jewish collaborator during World War II. Another work, “Dora Bruder,” developed out of a 1941 missing person’s ad for a teenage girl that the author came across in the late 1980s.
French President François Hollande praised the laureate for tackling the difficult subject of the occupation, saying, “He tries to understand how events lead individuals to lose or to find themselves.”
At home in France, Mr. Modiano has drawn largely favorable reviews, although some critics have bristled at his preference for short, simple and telegraph-like sentences. Scholars have pointed out the similarities among Mr. Modiano’s numerous books—he tends to publish a novel every two years—and sometimes express irritation over the author’s limited explanation of his works. Mr. Modiano addressed the matter head-on Thursday, saying that over 45 years of work, he often felt as if he were writing the same book.
While some of his novels are available in English, most are out of print. The Nobel announcement has Yale University Press accelerating plans to publish “Suspended Sentences,” a translation of three of Mr. Modiano’s related novellas.
Jordan Stump, a professor of French at the University of Nebraska, translated Mr. Modiano’s novel “Out of the Dark.” The author’s austere style offers “tremendous challenges” for translators, Mr. Stump said. “There is a kind of poetry in it but it’s very discreet. So if you translate him too plainly, or if you translate him too poetically, you completely lose the voice.”

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Mr. Modiano said he would travel to Stockholm later this year to accept the prize. Asked whether he intends to deliver a speech, the author, who has confessed to suffering from stage fright, said: “As long as it is about reading a prepared text, that doesn’t scare me.”
—Jennifer Maloney in Frankfurt and Anna Molin in Stockholm contributed to this article.
Corrections & Amplifications
The title of Mr. Modiano’s most recent book translates as “For you not to get lost in the neighborhood.” An earlier version of this article mistakenly translated it as “Why you don’t get lost in the neighborhood.” (Oct. 9, 2014)