Synopses & Reviews
In this rare glimpse into the life of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano, the author takes up his pen to tell his personal story. He addresses his early years—shadowy times in postwar Paris that haunt his memory and have inspired his world-cherished body of fiction. In the spare, absorbing, and sometimes dreamlike prose that translator Mark Polizzotti captures unerringly, Modiano offers a memoir of his first twenty-one years. Termed one of his “finest books” by the
Guardian,
Pedigree is both a personal exploration and a luminous portrait of a world gone by.
Pedigree sheds light on the childhood and adolescence that Modiano explores in Suspended Sentences, Dora Bruder, and other novels. In this work he re-creates the louche, unstable, colorful world of his parents under the German Occupation; his childhood in a household of circus performers and gangsters; and his formative friendship with the writer Raymond Queneau. While acknowledging that memory is never assured, Modiano recalls with painful clarity the most haunting moments of his early life, such as the death of his ten-year-old brother. Pedigree, Modiano’s only memoir, is a gift to his readers and a master key to the themes that have inspired his writing life.
Review
“Quite a pedigree has this ever-more-fascinating Nobel Prize-winner.”—James Campbell, TLS
Review
“In this slim but potent volume . . . [Modiano] grapples with the ghosts of the past and the events that shaped the man and writer he would become.”—Publishers Weekly
Review
“For those familiar with and interested in Modiano's fiction, Pedigree is essential reading”—M.A.Orthofer, Complete Review
Review
“[Pedigree] makes a powerful, lasting impression.”—Michael Autrey, Booklist
Review
“Compelling . . . highly effective . . . Mr. Modiano depends for effect not on rhetorical declaration or emotional outburst but on the accumulation of minor details. He is a writer unlike any other and a worthy recipient of the Nobel.”—James Campbell, Wall Street Journal
Synopsis
Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano admits that his many fictions are all variations of the same story. Pedigree is the theme.
Synopsis
Winner of France's premier literary prize the Prix Goncourt, Patrick Modiano portrays a man in pursuit of the identity he lost in the murky days of the Paris Occupation, the black hole of French memory. For ten years Guy Roland has lived without a past. His current life and name were given to him by his recently retired boss, Hutte, who welcomed him, a onetime client, into his detective agency. Guy makes full use of Hutte's files--directories, yearbooks, and papers of all kinds going back half a century--but his leads are few. Could he really be the person in that photograph, a young man remembered by some as a South American attach ? Or was he someone else, perhaps the disappeared scion of a prominent local family? He interviews strangers and is tantalized by half-clues until, at last, he grasps a thread that leads him through the maze of his own repressed experience.
On one level Missing Person is a detective thriller, a 1950s film noir mix of smoky caf s, illegal passports, and insubstantial figures crossing bridges in the fog. On another level, it is a haunting meditation on the nature of the self. Modiano's spare, hypnotic prose, superbly translated by Daniel Weissbort, draws his readers into the intoxication of a rare literary experience.
Synopsis
From master storyteller Patrick Modiano: winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Guy Roland is in pursuit of the identity he lost in the murky days of the Paris Occupation. For ten years, he has lived without a past. His current life and name were given to him by his recently retired boss, Hutte, who welcomed him, a onetime client, into his detective agency. Guy makes full use of Hutte's files--directories, yearbooks, and papers of all kinds going back half a century--but his leads are few. Could he really be the person in that photograph, a young man remembered by some as a South American attach ? Or was he someone else, perhaps the disappeared scion of a prominent local family? He interviews strangers and is tantalized by half-clues until, at last, he grasps a thread that leads him through the maze of his own repressed experience. Both a detective mystery and a haunting meditation on the nature of the self, Patrick Modiano's spare, hypnotic prose, superbly translated by Daniel Weissbort, draws readers into the intoxication of a rare literary experience.
About the Author
A conversation with translator Mark Polizzotti
Pedigree is a late work for Patrick Modiano that deals with his youth. What do we learn about him?
Several things that I believe are essential to understanding Modiano’s fictions. First, just how closely certain key recurring episodes in his novels are patterned on real events from his early life, and how profoundly they have shaped his sensibility. But also we learn about the context in which he grew up. For instance, certain areas of Paris—the Bois de Boulogne, or particular streets in the 6th or 16th arrondissement—show up frequently in his works; this memoir gives the backstory. More significantly, Modiano alludes in various novels to his problematic relations with his absentee mother and distant but controlling father; only after reading Pedigree did I truly grasp that complicated and heartbreaking dynamic.
Winning the Nobel Prize in 2014 certainly changed the fortune of Modiano’s literary career. How do you see his work in the tradition of Nobel laureates?
One of the things that most appeals to me about Modiano’s writing is its apparent modesty—or rather, its ability to treat some of the great issues of the twentieth century, such as human responsibility in times of crisis or the vicissitudes of identity, without grandstanding or self-conscious profundity. Unlike many Nobel winners, his work does not proclaim its importance, but instead remains on a personal, human scale; the more universal significance of his writings is read, as it were, between the lines. This deceptively simple, “local” quality makes his work, to my mind, much more accessible and enjoyable to read than the works of many recent laureates—but no less deserving of the honor.