This volume focuses on developments within national literature and in movements cutting across frontiers through the study of Patrick Modiano.

Winner of some of France's most prestigious literary prizes, Patrick Modiano is considered one of the most fascinating French novelists alive today. This is the first English literary critique of this best-selling French author, whose works are found increasingly in translation throughout the world and who is attracting considerable critical attention outside France.
In this lucid study, Alan Morris explores Modiano's fifteen major novels. He also traces Modiano's development as a writer and the tragedies which have influenced his works: the death of his younger brother, the neglect of his father and the horrors of the German occupation. Morris delves into Modiano's themes of time, memory, identity and the past, clearly demonstrating this intriguing writer's key place in French writing today.

This level-headed survey of the writer will serve as a very approachable introduction for students, as a stimulus to teachers of modern literature to explore Modiano further and as a starting-point for the more detailed explorations of this fascinating body of writing which will surely be undertaken before long.