Review:
"Compelling . . . highly effective. . . . Mr. Modiano depends for effect not on rhetorical declaration or emotional outburst but on the accumulation of minor details. He is a writer unlike any other and a worthy recipient of the Nobel."--James Campbell, Wall Street Journal
"[Modiano's] books . . . make up a system as beguiling and complete as any in contemporary literature. . . . In Pedigree, his memoir of his early life . . . he is preoccupied with the riddle of his father."--Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker
"Nobel Prize-winning author and screenwriter Patrick Modiano recalls his post-WWII Paris youth . . . filled with the kind of live-by-their-wits characters who inform his work."--Megan O'Grady, Vogue
"Terse, yet somehow infinitely generous, Pedigree both enacts and accounts for Modiano's fraught relationship with memory and the past--his own and those of his country. It outlines the stakes of his literary practice and reveals the specific sufferings this practice entails."--Kaiama L. Gloverdec, New York Times Book Review
"In this slim but potent volume . . . [Modiano] grapples with the ghosts of the past and the events that shaped the man and writer he would become."--Publishers Weekly
"The only book that Modiano has explicitly identified as a memoir . . . [Pedigree] tells us that nearly all of the fictions would be true had the author not peopled them with his surrogates."--Joshua Cohen, Harper's
"This book will stay with readers long after its end and begs for rereading. . . . Echoes of the gray, bleak, yet resilient mood of François Truffaut's 1959 film The 400 Blows are felt throughout, perhaps because both works share post-World War II Paris as the setting. . . . A truly wonderful book."--Derek Sanderson, Library Journal (starred review)
"For those familiar with and interested in Modiano's fiction, Pedigree is essential reading."--M.A.Orthofer, Complete Review
"[Pedigree] makes a powerful, lasting impression."--Michael Autrey, Booklist
"Brief and sharp, a pointillist interpretation of personal history."--James McAuley, New Republic
"Fascinating . . . much of the book surprises us with irresistible images. . . . Pedigree is an excellent introduction to one of the more enigmatic Nobel laureates in recent years."--Michael Magras, Book Reporter
"[Pedigree] gathers emotional power as the book progresses in this crystalline translation by Mark Polizzotti. . . . The memoir is a map, and once you've read it, you are no longer a tourist walking in the strange land of Modiano's fiction--now there are landmarks and familiar places you can revisit from a fresh angle."--Priyanka Kumar, Santa Fe New Mexican
"[Modiano], who won the Nobel Prize last year for a body of work as deft and beautiful as any in postwar European literature, is an excavator of memory . . . [Pedigree] tells the story of the author's early years."--David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times
"For those coming anew to Modiano, reading Pedigree first might be a wise choice. His life, such as he tells it here, is as extraordinary and as bizarre as the situations of his fiction . . . [and] it also goes a long way to show what made him a writer."--J.P. Smith, The Millions
"Wonderfully served by an excellent translator, Mark Polizzotti . . . in [Pedigree] we find the key to unlock the haunting, charged, atmospheric novels that preceded it . . . the memoir reiterates the elusive qualities of the novels and, in its concern for shadows and fog, casts the mysterious lives of [Modiano's] parents as emblematic of a larger obscured history."--Jonathan Wilson, Los Angeles Review of Books
Book Description:
An autobiographical portrait of Post-War Paris and a tumultuous childhood - by the 2014 Nobel Laureate
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