France's Patrick Modiano wins literature Nobel

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 on Thursday.

The Swedish Academy gave the 8 million-kronor ($1.1 million) prize to Modiano for evoking “the most ungraspable human destinies” and uncovering the world of life behind the Nazi occupation.

Modiano, 69, whose novel “Missing Person” won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 1978, was born in a west Paris suburb in July 1945, two months after World War II ended in Europe. His father was of Jewish-Italian origins and met his Belgian actress mother during the occupation of Paris.

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. (AP)