Patrick Modiano, Nobel Prize for Literature: “When you write, you … – 20minutos.es

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2014, Patrick Modiano, speaks at a press conference in Paris. (IAN Langsdon / EFE)

The French writer Patrick Modiano has been shown Thursday visibly surprised to have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014 and reiterated in a press conference that “writing is a solitary activity” in which the writer is protected from its readers.

I have not had time to know the reasons for choosing ” When you write a book, you hide behind it, “ said Modiano at the Paris headquarters of his publisher, Gallimard, which insisted that was not expected “at all” that the Swedish Academy grant him the Nobel Prize, which he dedicated to his Swedish grandson.

“I have not had time to know the reasons for choosing” confessed to the writer, 69, at a hearing in which he confirmed his reputation as a shy man and which insisted that he had not had time to assimilate the “abstract” and “unreal” of the award.

tight black eyebrows over the rims of his glasses and gesticulating profusely Modiano (Boulogne-Billancourt, 1945) insisted that “writing is a solitary activity.”

“We’re used to a kind of loneliness,” said Modiano, who commented that “it is easier to talk about the other” than yourself.

” Time goes faster and faster to the activities that need a little time, “the author of Trilogy occupancy or dark street shops, novel Goncourt Prize in 1978.

The writer, who was among the list of favorites to win the Swedish prize, enrolled at “transition generation, more sensitive to changes “that the writers of the nineteenth century when the pace of events was more sedate.

try to translate contemporary anxiety ” We try to translate that (…), translating contemporary angst, “said the writer, who acknowledged that the literature” can also be a kind of refuge “where the creator behaves ” as a cyclist continues (pedaling) without clear what “ your way.

No opt for an author, a book or a stream among its influences, because it would be very difficult to cite all the books that have shaped him” from childhood or adolescence, “ Modiano did refer to Albert Camus, Nobel in 1957, author she admires and who now shares record in the Swedish Academy.

Modiano, 15th French literature nobel takes over from his compatriot Jean-Marie Gustav Le Clezio, recognized in 2008, and joins a list of names which include writers like Jean-Paul Sartre and André Gide.

France is the country with more writers laureates by the Swedish Academy, followed by the USA (12), although the working language predominates among the winners is English .