Books

The complex world of Patrick Modiano

 

Patrick Modiano is one of only a handful of writers to have his work examined at an international conference of literary critics, and a second such event is planned for next year. The winner of some of France's most prestigious book prizes, Modiano now has a wide international following, eagerly awaiting the publication of his 21st novel since 1968.

Born on the outskirts of Paris, with a half-Italian father and a Belgian mother, actress Louisa Colpijn, Modiano’s own family background has heavily influenced his writings: the neglect of an absent father leading to his near abandonment as a child, the tragic death of his younger brother, the grim days of the German occupation and the ravages of war-torn France.

They provide the bricks and mortar for Modiano’s winning formula of a narrator describing his return to the past to seek out his origins, a detective story but a detective story with a difference, where invariably the identity quest remains elusive, even unsolved. His fiction contains many fascinating layers and contradictions, of present confused with past, guilt with innocence, certainty with mystery.

The German occupation in World War Two is a recurring theme in Modiano’s skilful reassessment of the present by means of a return to the past. Perhaps his best known work is Lacombe Lucien, made into a highly successful film by Louis Malle. In 1944 Lacombe, a young peasant, is rejected by the French Resistance as unreliable and proves them correct by joining the ranks of the German police. But his world is turned upside down when he falls in love with a Jewish girl, and becomes attached to the very people in society he has been ordered to oppress.

The Occupation also provides the backdrop for Les Boulevards de Ceinture, in which the narrator is prompted, at the age of seventeen, to look for his absent father. It won Modiano first prize for fiction from the Académie Francaise in 1972. What triggers the search is his discovery of an old photograph of a shadowy group of white-haired men, typical of the sombre greys and fading light that characterise the complexity and ambiguity of Modiano’s writing.

      

Other novels and scenarios:
Un pedigree [2005]
La Petite bijou [2001]
Dora Bruder [1997]
Catherine certitude [1988] illustrations by Sempé 
Rue des boutiques obscures [1978] Prix Goncourt