Modiano Wins Nobel Literature Prize

Publishers Lunch

The Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded on Thursday to the French author Patrick Modiano. 
In their citation, the prize judges commended Modiano "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation." 
As with the most recent French Nobel laureate, J.M.G. Le Clezio in 2008, few of Modiano's more than 30 novels have been translated into English. The most recent translation was DORA BRUDER/THE SEARCH WARRANT, published in the US by the University of California Press (1999) and in the UK by Harvill Secker (2000). But Yale University Press is scheduled to release a three-in-one omnibus of novellas in February 2015. David R. Godine has published three of Modiano's works -- THE MISSING PERSON, CATHERINE CERTITUDE, and HONEYMOON -- which they plan to "reprint ASAP" according to publicist Megan Sullivan on Twitter, and the University of Nebraska Press published OUT OF THE DARK. 
Godine himself told the Washington Post on hearing the news, "This means we'll be ahead this year!" Godine published Le Clezio as well. He noted, "It’s not until they win the Nobel that we actually sell copies. But we never remainder so we always have copies left."

In other awards news, the shortlist for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction was announced:

John Campbell, Roy Jenkins
Marion Coutts, The Iceberg: A Memoir
Greg Grandin, The Empire of Necessity
Alison Light, Common People
Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
Caroline Moorehead, Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France

The winner will be announced on November 4.