Patrick Modiano: 'A Marcel Proust of our time’?

The winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature was, in more ways than one, Patrick Modiano. Typically, the publicity-shy novelist had crept in under the radar, despite a late surge in the betting, and had even proved hard to locate once the decision had been taken. In terms of his artistic achievements, however, the Nobel Academy had no trouble in pinning him down. He was, their spokesman, Peter Englund, asserted, a ‘Marcel Proust of our time’.1 It is the aim of the present article briefly to explore this notion, and to evaluate just how apposite an assessment it is.