The 107th winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is 69-year-old Patrick Modiano. Modiano is the 11th French writer to win the prize, and will head home with $1.1 million as a result. The Nobel citation read in part that he won, “For the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.” Modiano’s best-known novel is Missing Person, about a detective who loses his memory, but he is not well known outside of France. Of course, with Modiano’s win, the scandal of Philip Roth being snubbed for another year continues.
