Cahier de l’Herne n° 98
One of 65 copies on fine paper, this one a trial proof (“E.E.” no. 005).
Edited by Raphaëlle Rérolle and Maryline Heck, this volume of over 350 pages constitutes the first major collective critical study devoted to Patrick Modiano. It brings together previously unpublished texts by the writer, autobiographical fragments and working notes, interviews in which he discusses his method and recurring themes, as well as a series of critical studies analyzing his relationship to History and memory, his recurring figures of orphans and missing persons, and his obsessive mapping of Paris. It also includes testimonies from writers, publishers and contemporaries, underscoring the singularity of a body of work entirely marked by erasure and the quest for identity. The iconography (photographs, facsimiles of manuscripts) and the annotated bibliography complete this comprehensive portrait.
Published two years before Modiano was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, this volume was a milestone: it firmly established his work within the field of contemporary literature, along with both institutional and international recognition.