Such Fine Boys Patrick Modiano, Mark Polizzotti, J. M. G. Le Clézio

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Series:: The Margellos World Republic of Letters
Format:: Paperback
Publication date:: 19 Sep 2017
ISBN:: 9780300223347
Imprint:: Yale University Press
Dimensions:: 208 pages: 197 x 127 x 14mm
Sales territories:: World

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Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano’s spellbinding tale of adolescent schoolmates and the vicissitudes of fate

As a boarding school student in the early 1960s, Patrick Modiano lived among the troubled teenage sons of wealthy but self-involved parents. In this mesmerizing novel, Modiano weaves together a series of exquisitely crafted stories about such jettisoned boys at the exclusive Valvert School on the outskirts of Paris: abandoned children of privilege, left to create new family ties among themselves. Misfits and heroes, sports champions and good-hearted chums, the boys of Valvert misbehave, run away, get expelled, and engage in various forms of delinquency and disappearance. They emerge into adulthood tragically damaged, still tethered to their adolescent selves, powerless to escape the central loneliness of their lives in an ever-darkening spiral of self-delusion and grim consequence.

A meditation on nostalgia, the pitfalls of privilege, and the vicissitudes of fate, this book fully demonstrates the powerful mix of sadness, mystery, wonder, and ominous danger that characterizes Modiano’s most rewarding fiction.

Special feature: J. M. G. Le Clézio’s foreword, here in English for the first time, provides a rare and insightful appreciation of one Nobel laureate by another.

Internationally renowned author Patrick Modiano has received many prestigious literary awards, among them the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature. Mark Polizzotti is the translator of more than forty books from the French, including seven by Modiano. He directs the publications program at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

“Parental callousness is nowhere analyzed with such empathy and nuance as in Such Fine Boys . . . a study in the varieties of self-absorption, or carelessness, and a reckoning of its costs.”—Robyn Creswell, New York Review of Books

“Melancholy and strikingly beautiful.”—Catholic Herald