Nobelist Patrick Modiano’s works finally becoming widely available in English translation

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When Patrick Modiano was awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, my reaction was similar to that of a lot of U.S. readers: WHO? Patrick WHO? Now, finally, in the wake of the Nobel, U.S. publishers are hurrying to release some of his thirty works in translation.

Suspended Sentences, a collection of three novellas, translated and with an introduction by Mark Polizzotti, had been scheduled for publication later this year but was – thankfully – rushed into print by Yale University Press.

There are so many ways to think of (or describe) these novellas that it is difficult to know how to begin. There are certain themes that appear over and over. “I always have the impression that I write the same book, which means it’s already 45 years that I’ve been writing the same book,” he is said to have remarked when told he had won the Nobel Prize. (Alan Riding, The New York Times, 12/24/14)

The novellas can be read as a love poem to a Paris that has disappeared, a Paris that will never be recovered and, perhaps, never was. This theme