Keyword: Patrick Modiano

Fleur Pellerin said she had no time to read for pleasure and hadn't read the books of French 2014 Nobel literature prize-winner Patrick Modiano.

After Nobel award for French writer and then economist, prime minister rounds on critics saying it is 'one in the eye' for country's detractors.

Patrick Modiano, le 9 octobre à Paris. © Reuters

On Thursday French author Patrick Modiano was named as the 2014 recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. In its citation the Swedish Academy said the prize had been awarded to honour “the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the Occupation”. It is, above all, recognition of 40 years of an obsessive quest, motivated by the fear of forgetting. Here Mediapart journalist Ellen Salvi, who spent five years at the Sorbonne in Paris studying Modiano's work and who has met the media-shy writer in person, shares her insight into the past influences and “previous lives” that have helped shape his writing.

The author, the 11th French writer to win prize, is best-known for his novel 'Missing Person' about a detective who loses his memory.