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Monday 5 January 2015

Books 2014: Suspended Sentences

Patrick Modiano is a French author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2014, which is the reason I picked up one of his books. Suspended Sentences is a collection of three separate novellas/long short stories (originally written in the late 80s/early 90s), though sometimes they seem connected. The titles are:
Afterimage (Chien de printemps) (1993)
Suspended sentences (Remise de peine)(1988)
Flowers of ruin (Fleurs de ruine) (1991)
The books is translated by Mark Polizzotti, and since I have no chance of comparing it to the original, I don't know if this is a good translation or not. Personally, I didn't like it much. I found both the style of writing and the stories themselves slightly boring, and was happy when I reached the last page. But then, I've had that feeling before with Nobel Prize winners.(So it might just be me ...) But again - perhaps the translation didn't manage to express the true greatness of Modiano's writing?


Modiano, Patrick (2014). Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas. New Haven & London: Yale. Kindle edition. 

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