In a marvelous phrase, Erich Heller credited Franz Kafka with having achieved “the most obscure lucidity in the history of literature.” Heller’s witty oxymoron could be applied with equal justice to the French writer Patrick Modiano, the author of roughly two dozen novels and novellas and winner of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature.

When Modiano, born in 1945, received the Nobel, a handful of his books were available in English, but many were not. Thanks to the prize, previously untranslated books appeared in English, and new work was promptly translated by Mark Polizzotti, so there was a consistency in voice.