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Notes
1. Alter and Bilefsky, “Patrick Modiano, a Modern ‘Proust,’ Is Awarded Nobel in Literature.” Figures for UK sales were equally grim: see Flood, “British Publisher to Translate Patrick Modiano’s Only Children’s Book,” where the journalist comments: “Prior to his Nobel win, Modiano had sold just 266 books in the UK in 2013, according to Nielsen BookScan, and 284 in 2012.”
2. Morris, Patrick Modiano, 9.
3. Brockes, “The Real Scandal of Patrick Modiano’s Nobel Win is that Philip Roth is a Huge Loser—Again.”
4. See for example Lovell, The Politicls of Cultural Capital or Guillory, The Problem of Literary Canon Formation.
5. For a fascinating case study, see Linder’s discussion of the formation of a German “translation canon” of Chinese works; Linder, “China in German Translation.”
6. Strachan was awarded the Times Literary Supplement–Scott Moncrieff Literary Translation Prize in 1999 for Le Testament français.
7. Fairweather, “Interview: Andrei Makine—Through the Iron Curtain to Paris.”
8. A 1974 translation by Catherine Hillier is out of print, as is her 1977 translation of Villa triste. Also out of print is A Trace of Malice, Anthea Bell’s 1988 translation of Le Quartier perdu (1984).
9. Heck, “Patrick Modiano.”
10. British publisher Maclehose has purchased the rights for this and Modiano’s previous novel, L’Herbe des nuits (2012).
11. Bigot, “Modiano écrit-il tourjours le meme livre?”
12. Not surprisingly, several more are in the pipeline with British and American publishers, including an “Occupation Trilogy” made up of La Place de l’étoile, The Night Watch, and Ring Roads (Bloomsbury, released in August 2015), and combining the previously out-of-print 1974 translations of Ring Roads and Place de l’étoile by Caroline Hillier and of Night Watch [formerly titled Night Rounds, 1972] by Patricia Wolf for Gollancz. Bloomsbury’s website informs us that these existing translations have been revised by “award-winning translator” Irishman Frank Wynne). Australian publisher Text offers a translation (by Phoebe Weston-Evans) of Modiano’s Paris nocturne, out in July 2015 and to be released by Yale University Press in October. The announcement of a “new” translation from Andersen Press (UK), of Modiano’s “only children’s book” (see Flood, “British Publisher to Translate Patrick Modiano’ Only Children’s Book”) is in fact misleading, as he has worked with his wife Dominique Zehrfuss on two other illustrated books for young people, both featuring the dog Choura. Despite Flood’s claim, this is not a new translation but the US one by William Rodarmor published by David R. Godine in 2001.
13. A long interview with Polizzotti makes no mention of the reordering of the novellas either (Yale Books Unbound, accessed August 10, 2015, http://blog.yupnet.org/2014/11/11/interview-mark-polizzotti-modiano). He does indicate he is in discussion with the publisher about doing more Modiano texts.
14. In the comparative tables that follow, quotations refer to the original French text listed in the “Works by Modiano” section of the bibliography. Quotations from translations are from British or American publications listed in the “Translations” section of the bibliography under the translators’ names. Page numbers are given in brackets at the end of the quoted text.
15. For a useful discussion of the complexities of translating these two narrative tenses between French and English, see Mallier, “Tenses in Translation.”
16. Yale University Press Interview, Yale Books Unbound
17. Polizzotti, Suspended Sentences, vii
18. Stump, Out of the Dark, x.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Jean Anderson
Jean Anderson is a reader in French at Victoria University of Wellington, where she founded the New Zealand Centre for Literary Translation in 2007. Her interest in literary translation are focused chiefly on contemporary fiction from Mauritius and Tahiti, and she is currently working on a crime novel set in seventeenth-century Vietnam.