num_pages: 144
description: Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano has said that his many fictions are all variations of the same story. Pedigree his memoir is the theme.In this rare glimpse into the life of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano the author takes up his pen to tell his personal story. He addresses his early yearsshadowy times in postwar Paris that haunt his memory and have inspired his world-cherished body of fiction. In the spare absorbing and sometimes dreamlike prose that translator Mark Polizzotti captures unerringly Modiano offers a memoir of his first twenty-one years. Termed one of his finest books by the Guardian Pedigree is both a personal exploration and a luminous portrait of a world gone by. Pedigree sheds light on the childhood and adolescence that Modiano explores in Suspended Sentences Dora Bruder and other novels. In this work he re-creates the louche unstable colorful world of his parents under the German Occupation; his childhood in a household of circus performers and gangsters; and his formative friendship with the writer Raymond Queneau. While acknowledging that memory is never assured Modiano recalls with painful clarity the most haunting moments of his early life such as the death of his ten-year-old brother. Pedigree Modianos only memoir is a gift to his readers and a master key to the themes that have inspired his writing life.
language: English
title: Pedigree: A Memoir
publisher: Yale University Press