Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas

Publisher Marketing: In this essential trilogy of novellas by the winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, French author Patrick Modiano reaches back in time, opening the corridors of memory and exploring the mysteries to be encountered there. Each novella in the volume "Afterimage," "Suspended Sentences," and "Flowers of Ruin" represents a sterling example of the author s originality and appeal, while Mark Polizzotti s superb English-language translations capture not only Modiano s distinctive narrative voice but also the matchless grace and spare beauty of his prose. Although originally published separately, Modiano s three novellas form a single, compelling whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Modiano draws on his own experiences, blended with the real or invented stories of others, to present a dreamlike autobiography that is also the biography of a place. Orphaned children, mysterious parents, forgotten friends, enigmatic strangers all appear in this three-part love song to a Paris that no longer exists. Shadowed by the dark period of the Nazi Occupation, these novellas reveal Modiano s fascination with the lost, obscure, or mysterious: a young person s confusion over adult behavior; the repercussions of a chance encounter; the search for a missing father; the aftershock of a fatal affair. To read Modiano s trilogy is to enter his world of uncertainties and the almost accidental way in which people find their fates." Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 10/20/2014 (EAN 9780300198058, Paperback) Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2014 (EAN 9780300198058, Paperback) - *Starred Review Library Journal 12/01/2014 pg. 99 (EAN 9780300198058, Paperback) Booklist 12/15/2014 pg. 27 (EAN 9780300198058, Paperback) New York Times Book Review 12/28/2014 pg. 16 (EAN 9780300198058, Paperback) New York Times Book Review 01/04/2015 pg. 22 (EAN 9780300198058, Paperback) Contributor Bio:  Modiano, Patrick PATRICK MODIANO was born in 1945 in a suburb of Paris and grew up in various locations throughout France. In 1967, he published his first novel, La Place de l'etoile, to great acclaim. Since then, he has published over twenty novels--including the Goncourt Prize-winning Rue des boutiques obscures (translated as Missing Person), Dora Bruder, and Les Boulevards des ceintures (translated as Ring Roads)--as well as the memoir Un Pedigree and a children's book, Catherine Certitude. He collaborated with Louis Malle on the screenplay for the film Lacome Lucien. In 2014, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy cited "the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the Occupation," calling him "a Marcel Proust of our time."