Nobel literature win for French author Modiano

Patrick Modiano of France, who has made a lifelong study of the Nazi occupation and its effects on his country, won the 2014 Nobel Prize in literature for what one academic called "crystal clear and resonant" prose.

Modiano, a 69-year-old resident of Paris, is an acclaimed writer in France but not well-known in the English-speaking world. The Swedish Academy said they gave the prize to him for evoking “the most ungraspable human destinies” and uncovering the world of life behind the Nazi occupation.

Jewishness, the Nazi occupation and loss of identity are recurrent themes in his novels, which include 1968’s La Place de l’Etoile — later hailed in Germany as a key post-Holocaust work.