Modiano, instructions – The País.com (Spain)

Modiano on 9 October. / Marc Piasecki (Getty Images)

I do not remember never so happy as yesterday, when I learned that the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Patrick Modiano. A great joy, in contrast to the disappointment that came over me when a year ago, the same award was given to another French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. One day I asked, without neglecting the literary work of the author of African , for when the Nobel to a contemporary classic carving Modiano, not only of the French literature but also universal.

By chance, reading a novel by George Simenon, I came to mind a character Modiano. In the history of Simenon, Mahé , there is a thirty-five who wonders about the future of their existence. The anguish of this man reminded me of Louis A youth Modiano, in the same way that the final police The herbs Night reminded me so much of the resigned serenity Inspector Maigret. Have nothing to do Modiano and Simenon, except that both have an inimitable sound, just as no sound or sound Ravel Mozart. There is also a sound Modiano. What about when records the collective shame of a collaborationist city. Or the sound between hopeless and vile city tormented by hunger and the need for survival.

If anyone had ever read any of the flaming Nobel prize and would like to start today with the reading, I would to suggest five books. Start with trilogy occupation ( The Star Place , 1968, The Night Watch , 1969, rides ring , 1972), Anagram excellent idea to bring together in one volume the three great novels set in occupied Paris. I will certainly recommend A youth (1980), essential for understanding the psychological and moral functioning of their usual surviving text.

A book that is often overlooked but is an example research literature and also ethical pronouncement without this explicit (the famous modiananas ellipses) on the roundup of Jews executed by the police in Paris in the summer of 1942: I mean Dora Bruder . Also A pedigree (2007): Text summit of autobiographical literature: there is no confession, is an exercise of individual memory linked to collective memory. Modiano’s writing in the service of personal truths without resentment, no anger: the Spotless search (or inner chronic) about parents condemned to survive the Edge of the crime and shame. And finally, Grass nights (2012) paradigmatic book literature of turbidity. A love story between people who are hidden shadows mediaspalabras as real beings as conjectural.

The Swedish Academy awards rewarding herself who has always written the same book (as himself says Modiano) . The same book impossible not to write and not imagine, given what was experienced in Europe saddest makes just a little more than half a century. And with that surgical lyrical prose. So is the sound Modiano, amid the noise of the world.