by Julien Bisson November 15, 2011
There's no getting around it: meeting the greatest French writer alive is very impressive. Patrick Modiano published his first novel, La Place de l'Etoile, in 1968; he won the Prix Goncourt in 1978, and over the following three decades he has confirmed his landmark status in national literature with a celebrated body of work.
One of the few French writers to achieve both critical and public success—his new novel L'Horizon has already sold 80,000 copies—Modiano has developed a rare combination of excellence and elegance so compelling that singer-songwriter Vincent Delerm evoked it in his 2004 song Le Baiser Modiano.
