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Interesting speculation on this year's

Thanks for this!

Here's the , for what it's worth.

It's too bad that most articles focus so much on the Ladbrokes odds. A bit more .

I'm pretty sure the Swedish critic polled in is trolling when she suggests Sofi Oksanen and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - both are excellent, but I very much doubt they're going to give it to anyone under 40.

But yeah, I'd love to see it go to Ngugi or Alexievich.

Here's a on the Prize

Bjorn wrote: "It's too bad that most articles focus so much on the Ladbrokes odds. A bit more here.

I'm pretty sure the Swedish critic polled in this article is trolling when she suggests Sofi Oksanen and Chima..."

Thakns for that, Bjorn. As is often the case, I think the judges will surprise us.

Well, I go away for a couple of days and when I come back we have a new Laureate.

Hearty congratulations to Patrick Modiano on winning the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature. I look forward to getting to know your work over the next couple of years.

For those of you who, like me, were not very aware of Patrick Modiano before this week, here's an to bring you up to speed.

Some more on Patrick Modiano

David wrote: "Well, I go away for a couple of days and when I come back we have a new Laureate.

Hearty congratulations to Patrick Modiano on winning the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature. I look forward to getti..."

I am not familiar with his oeuvre. I guess I need to go and check it out. I will read the articles to see with which book to start.

And finally on this thread some reviews from

With all of the curiosity over 2014 Nobel winner Patrick Modiano, I decided to read some of his work & find out what he's all about. I'm lucky that my library has one of his most critically acclaimed works available - Rue des Boutiques Obscures/Missing Person. Clocking in at a mere 159 pages (and they were small pages), this story probably falls into novella territory.

I loved Missing Person. It is the story of a search for lost identity, and it examines this theme from many angles. Our protagonist is ready to cling to any potential identity, chasing a thin thread of memory to find his past. His identity is fluid, changing as his search progresses and he finds clues pointing to various potential identities. Modiano has also made it difficult for the reader to identify who is talking, whose thoughts they are reading - conversations become jumbled, the narrative changes time and place without warning, the narration is briefly taken over by a different voice. This theme of identity ties to the French experience during world war two - many people had to flee, go into hiding, assume false identities. Families were separated and people were left, both figuratively and literally, without their identity. There is a lot of smart stuff going on here, I get the sense that Modiano has crafted this story very carefully. As well as being clever & well crafted, Modiano's writing is extremely graceful, beautiful. I'm really looking forward to reading more of his work.