The Nobel Prize for Literature yet again eluded the popular Japanese writer Haruki Murakami (Norwegian Wood). But this year’s winner, dark horse that he is, deserves the honor.
今年诺贝尔文学奖结果已揭晓，人气颇高的日本作家村上春树再次落选，而这位半路杀出的“黑马”却当之无愧。
French writer Patrick Modiano, 69, has won the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature for works that made him “a Marcel Proust (a well-known French author in the 19th century) of our time” with tales often set during the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II, the Swedish Academy announced on Oct 9.
10月9日，瑞典皇家科学院宣布，现年69岁的法国作家帕特里克•莫迪亚诺获得2014年诺贝尔文学奖。因其作品多以二战期间纳粹统治下的巴黎为背景，莫迪亚诺被喻为“当代的马塞尔•普鲁斯特（19世纪著名法国作家）”。

Relatively unknown outside of France and a renowned media recluse, Modiano’s works have centered on memory, loss and the puzzle of identity. He has written novels, children’s books and film scripts.
在法国之外，莫迪亚诺鲜为人知，也很少接受媒体采访。他的作品集中探讨记忆、遗忘以及身份之谜。他不仅写过小说，还写过儿童读物和电影剧本。
The academy said the award of 8 million Swedish crowns (about 6.8 million yuan) was “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies”.
瑞典皇家科学院称，之所以将800万瑞典克朗（约680万元人民币）的诺奖奖金颁给他，是因为他“以记忆的艺术，唤起了人类最难以捉摸的命运。”
Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, noted that Modiano’s works are “always variations of the same thing, about memory, about loss, about identity, about seeking.”
瑞典皇家科学院常任秘书彼得•英格伦这样评价莫迪亚诺的作品：“（他的作品）是同一事物的各个方面，关于记忆、遗失、身份以及寻觅。”
In France, Modiano is a respected writer, The New York Times reported. His books, often coming in shorter than 200 pages, are widely read. Many of his fictional works are set in Paris during World War II, and some play with the detective genre.
据《纽约时报》报道，在法国，莫迪亚诺是一位受人尊敬的作家。他的书通常不到200页，却被广为阅读。他的小说多以二战时的巴黎为背景，一些则涉猎侦探题材。
Refined repetition
优雅的“重复”
His first novel La Place de l’Etoile, published in 1968, remains probably his best known book and touched on many themes that he would return to throughout his career, including the fate of the Jews under the Nazis.
莫迪亚诺的处女作《星形广场》出版于1968年，至今仍是他最著名的作品。该书包含的诸多主题，都贯穿了他整个的创作生涯，包括，纳粹统治下犹太人的命运等。
Modiano, reacting to the award, said he felt like he had been writing versions of the same book for many years.
对于获奖一事，莫迪亚诺说，他觉得自己多年来不过是在写同一本书的各种版本。
“What I am keen to see are the reasons why they chose me... One can never really be one’s own reader,” he told a news conference in Paris. “Even more so because I have the impression of writing the same book for 45 years.”
他在巴黎的新闻发布会上表示，“我很想知道他们为何选中我……因为没有一个人能真正成为自己的读者。而且我觉得自己45年来一直在写同一本书。”
“Of the unique things about him, one is of course his style, which is very precise, very economical. He writes small, short, very elegant sentences,” Englund said. “And he returns to generally the same topics again and again, simply because these topics cannot be exhausted.”
英格伦则说，“他有许多与众不同之处，言简意赅的写作风格就是其中之一，他笔下的句子短小、文雅。他一次次回到相同的主题，只因为这些都是永恒的主题。”
“After each novel, I have the impression that I have cleared it all away,” Modiano told France Today in a 2011 interview. “But I know I’ll come back over and over again to tiny details, little things that are part of what I am.”
在2011年接受《今日法国》采访时，莫迪亚诺说，“每写完一本小说，我觉得自己已将其完全抛于脑后，但我知道自己还是会一次次在细节中回归，因为那些微小之处正是我的一部分。”
“In the end, we are all determined by the place and the time in which we were born.”
“最终，我们都由自己出生时的时间和空间所决定。”
Modiano is not an unfamiliar name in Chinese literary circle. Many of his works have been translated into Chinese and have been an influence on some Chinese writers. The late writer Wang Xiaobo, for example, opened his own novel Temple of Eternal Life with the opening sentences from Modiano’s Missing Person: “I am nothing. Nothing but a pale shape.”
在中国文学圈中，莫迪亚诺并不是一个陌生的名字。他的很多作品都被译成中文，影响了一批中国作家。其中，已故作家王小波就曾将他《暗店街》中的句子“我的过去，一片朦胧。”作为自己小说《万寿寺》的开篇语。