Books by Patrick Modiano and Complete Book Reviews

Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Frank Wynne. Bloomsbury, $18 trade paper (352p) ISBN 978-1-63286-372-0
Nobel Prize–winner Modiano's first three novels, collected in this appealing omnibus, deftly demonstrate how the Parisian upper class functioned during the Nazi occupation of France in WWII. The novels—"La Place de l'Etoile" (appearing in English...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Phoebe Weston-Evans. Yale Univ., $16 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-0-300-21588-5
Modiano was little known on the world stage until he received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014. This novel provides a superb and—at 160 pages—accessible entry to his writings. Its themes of memory and loss are emblematic of Modiano’s oeuvre....
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Patrick Modiano, Author, Jordan Stump, Translator University of Nebraska Press $55 (139p) ISBN 978-0-8032-3196-2
Well-known in France (this, his 14th novel, was published there in 1996), Modiano tackles characteristic themes of love and loss in this elegiac work. The narrator, a middle-aged writer, looks back to the early 1960s when he was an aimless ex-student
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale Univ., $16 trade paper (232p) ISBN 978-0-300-19805-8
This set of three newly translated novellas from 2014 Nobel winner Modiano is propitious in timing and format: the collection’s variety gives curious readers a broad introduction to a writer of purposefully narrow scope. Modiano has facetiously...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale Univ., $25 (144p) ISBN 978-0-300-21533-5
Modiano, winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for literature, recounts, in laconic, clear-eyed prose, his youth and coming of age in post-WWII Paris. Modiano, the son of a cold, hard actress mother and a shady black marketeer father, did not enjoy an...
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Patrick Modiano, Author, Jean-Jacques Sempe, Illustrator, William Rodarmor, Translator , illus. by Jean-Jacques Sempé, trans. by William Rodarmor. Godine $17.95 (58p) ISBN 978-0-87923-959-6
In this novella, ensconced in a roomy picture-book format with feather-light illustrations, a dancer reminisces on her childhood in the 10th arrondissement in Paris. Catherine Certitude remembers living with her French father, a dreamer whose...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Euan Cameron. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24 (208p) ISBN 978-0-544-63506-7
A quietly haunting search for the truth—or at least for the facts—of a postwar French childhood, Nobel-winner Modiano’s novel spins out over a summer in which “everything is uncertain.” The quest begins with a phone call: elderly, isolated writer...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale Univ., $16 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-0-300-23831-0
Originally published in France in 1977 and now translated by Polizzotti, this satisfying blend of memoir and novelization from Nobel laureate Modiano nimbly leaps through its discursive narrative. Divided into short, nonlinear vignettes capturing...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale Univ, $24 (176p) ISBN 978-0-300-25258-3
Nobel laureate Modiano delivers a mesmerizing, enigmatic novel in the vein of many of his best-known works. Like Missing Person, the book is about a private eye—albeit a shabby and halfhearted one—who once briefly worked for the Hutte Detective...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale Univ, $25 (168p) ISBN 978-0-300-26593-4
Nobel laureate Modiano (Invisible Ink) delivers a dense narrative of a writer exploring his past. After Jean Bosmans hears a familiar song in a Paris café, he begins jotting down memories from 50 years earlier, when he was roughly 20 and dating a...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale Univ, $18 trade paper (112p) ISBN 978-0-300-27819-4
Nobel winner Modiano (In the Café of Lost Youth) dazzles with this pithy and introspective mystery sparked by faded memories. It opens with the narrator remembering a favor he once did for a woman nicknamed “the ballerina” in 1960s Paris. After...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Damion Searls. Yale Univ., $16 trade paper (168p) ISBN 978-0-300-22333-0
Nobel Prize–winner Modiano (Suspended Sentences) does more with less in this subtle and haunting noir. He places the reader in uncertain terrain from the outset, as his unnamed narrator has an unexpected encounter in Nice with a man he hates and...
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Patrick Modiano, trans. from the French by Mark Polizzotti. Yale Univ., $24 (136p) ISBN 978-0-300-23830-3
A classic Modiano novel from its very first scene, which opens on the quays of the Seine in a bookseller’s stall, the Nobel winner’s latest is a startlingly beautiful excavation of his classic themes. A writer in his 70s looks back—and fixates—on a...
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