French author wins 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature

French author Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, on Thursday in Stockholm.

"The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2014 is awarded to the French author Patrick Modiano, for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation," Englund said at the Swedish Academy.

Modiano's works centers on memory, oblivion, identity and guilt.

"The city of Paris is often present in the text and can almost be considered a creative participant in the works," said the Swedish Academy in a statement, adding that, "His home town and its history often serve to link the tales together."

"Rather often, his tales are built on an autobiographical foundation, or on events that took place during the German occupation," said the statement.

When he was just 23, Modiano made his debut as a writer with the novel La place de l'etoile, a book that attracted a great deal of recognition.

Modiano sometimes draws material for his works from interviews, newspaper articles, or his own notes that he has accumulated over the years. His novels show an affinity with one another, and it happens that his characters recur in different tales, the statement said.

His notable documentary work is Dora Bruder (1997) which is based on the true-life tale of a 15-year-old girl in Paris who becomes a victim of the Holocaust.

Among his work, he also published an autobiography in 2005 called Un pedigree, according to the statement.

Some of Modiano's works have been translated into English, such as Les boulevards de ceinture (1972), Villa Triste (1975), Quartier perdu (1984), Voyage de noces (1990). Together with the film director Louis Malle, he made the feature movie Lacombe Lucien (1974) about the German occupation of France.

Modiano has also written children's books.

Modiano was born on July 30, 1945, in Boulogne-Billancourt, a suburb of Paris.

Last year's Nobel literature prize went to Canadian writer Alice Munro.