French writer Patrick Modiano has won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature for works that made him "a Marcel Proust of our time," the Swedish Academy said on Thursday.
Relatively unknown outside of France, Modiano's works have centered on memory, oblivion, identity and guilt that often take place during the German occupation of World War Two. He has written novels, children's books and film scripts.
Some of Modiano's roughly 30 works include "A Trace of Malice" and "Honeymoon". His latest work is the novel "Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier".
Modiano was born in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt in July 1945, several months after the official end of Nazi occupation in late 1944.
He was a protégé of novelist Raymond Queneau, famous for his experiments with language. Modiano has already won France's prestigious Goncourt prize in 1978 for his work.
The most number of winners of the literature prize have gone to authors who have written first in English, followed by French and German. Modiano is the 11th person from France to win the literature prize - the last was Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio in 2008.
Literature was the fourth of this year's Nobel Prizes. The prize is named after Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, and has been awarded since 1901 for achievements in science, literature and peace in accordance with his will.
