French novelist Patrick Modiano was yesterday awarded France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, for his novel, “Rue des Boutiques Obscures” (Street of Darkened Shops). Although the award is only a 50 Franc ($10) check, it usually assures a sale of well over 100,000 copies of the novel. The 33-year-old writer, who was awarded the French Academy Prize in 1972, is of Jewish origin and considers himself a Jew. All of his books have dealt with the strange fauna–black marketers and semi-collaborators–who lived and sometimes prospered in the shadow of the Nazi occupation.
Modiano, who has been acclaimed, since his first novel, “Place de I’Etoile” in 1968, as one of France’s foremost writers, has not always been popular with certain French Jews as some of his Jewish characters play a shady role in their dealings with the Germans and the Vichy police. Modiano is the author of the book on which the film, “Lucien Lacombe,” was made and who also wrote the script. In this book he explains how an “innocent” and half-dim youth joins the pro-Nazi French police.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
