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 Relatively unknown outside of France and a media recluse,
Modiano's works have centered on memory, oblivion, identity and
guilt. He has written novels, children's books and film scripts.
"You could say he's a Marcel Proust of our time," Peter Englund,
permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, told reporters.
The academy said the award of 8 million Swedish crowns ($1.1
million) was "for the art of memory with which he has evoked the
most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of
the occupation".
His first novel 'La Place de l'Etoile', published in 1968,
remains probably his best known book and touched on many themes
that he would return to throughout his career, including the
fate of the Jews under the Nazis.
Little of his writing is available in English but his roughly 40
works include "A Trace of Malice", "Missing Person," and
"Honeymoon". His latest work is the novel "Pour que tu ne te
perdes pas dans le quartier".
Modiano, reacting to the award, said he felt like he had been
writing versions of the same book for many years.
"What I am keen to see are the reasons why they chose me ... One
can never really be one's own reader," he told a news conference
in Paris. "Even more so because I have the impression of writing
the same book for 45 years."
The writer said he would dedicate the prize to his Swedish
grandson.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: "He is undoubtedly one
of the greatest writers of recent years, of the early 21st
century. This is well-deserved for a writer who is moreover
discreet, as is much of his excellent work."
Modiano, 69, was born in the Paris suburb of
Boulogne-Billancourt in July 1945, several months after the
official end of the Nazi occupation in late 1944.
His father was Jewish and his mother Flemish and non-Jewish.
They met during the Occupation and that mixed heritage combined
with moral questions about France's relations with Nazi forces
have played an important role in his novels.
"Ambiguity, this is one of the characteristics of his work,"
said Dr. Alan Morris, senior lecturer in French at Strathclyde
University. "There is an attempt to try and reconstruct some
kind of story from the past, but it inevitably proves
impossible."
Modiano was a protege of novelist Raymond Queneau, famous for
his experiments with language. Modiano has already won France's
prestigious Goncourt prize in 1978 for his work.
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"Of the unique things about him, one is of course his style which is
very precise, very economical. He writes small, short, very elegant
sentences," Englund said. "And he returns to generally the same
topics again and again, simply because these topics cannot be
exhausted."
Modiano became a household name in France during the late 1970s but
never appeared comfortable before cameras and soon withdrew from the
gaze of publicity.
He is also known for having co-written the script of Louis Malle's
controversial 1974 movie "Lacombe Lucien" about a teenager living
under the Occupation who is rejected by the French resistance and
falls in with pro-Nazi collaborators.
"After each novel, I have the impression that I have cleared it all
away," Modiano told France Today in a 2011 interview. "But I know
I'll come back over and over again to tiny details, little things
that are part of what I am."
"In the end, we are all determined by the place and the time in
which we were born."
Jo Lendle, his German publisher at Hanser publishing house, said:
"He was an author that was on the list for a long long time.
"We waited with him and now he won the prize. We are overwhelmed."
Bookies had made him one of the favorites along with Japanese writer
Haruki Murakami and Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiong'o. U.S. writer
Philip Roth, a perennial contender, was also overlooked.
The most number of winners of the literature prize have gone to
authors who have written first in English, followed by French and
German. Modiano is the 11th person from France to win the literature
prize - the last was Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio in 2008.
Literature was the fourth of this year's Nobel Prizes. The prize is
named after Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, and has been
awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace
in accordance with his will.
(Additional reporting by Simon Johnson, Mia Shanley and Johan
Ahlander in Stockholm; Mark John and Nick Vinocur in Paris,; Kirsti
Knolle in Frankfurt, Editing by Crispian Balmer and Angus MacSwan)
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