Every time a little-known foreigner scoops up the Nobel prize in literature, we suspect that, if we can bothered, an ordeal of pretentiously obscure heavy reading lies ahead. The latest Nobel laureate, Patrick Modiano, a 69-year-old French novelist, seems to fit the bill. When his win was announced, it took some sleuthing to find any of his books in print. Now Yale has brought out a translation of three novellas published in France between 1988 and 1993. They are absolutely terrific: the best things I have read in a long time.
Each novella is narrated in the first person by someone called Patrick, who lives in Paris. In Afterimage, set in 1964, he is 19, in Suspended Sentences he is