Overview

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.

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9780300223347

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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

Could a generation be lost if they were never wanted in the first place? . . . [Such Fine Boys] gently indicts the duplicity and futility of an entire generation . . . J. M. G. Le Cl�zio, another French Nobel laureate, says it best in his foreword: 'This is at once the clearest, the purest, and the most complex' of Modiano's novels. --Michael Autrey, Booklist (starred review)

- Could a generation be lost if they were never wanted in the first place? . . . [Such Fine Boys] gently indicts the duplicity and futility of an entire generation . . . J. M. G. Le Clezio, another French Nobel laureate, says it best in his foreword: 'This is at once the clearest, the purest, and the most complex' of Modiano's novels. --Michael Autrey, Booklist (starred review)

Could a generation be lost if they were never wanted in the first place? . . . [Such Fine Boys] gently indicts the duplicity and futility of an entire generation . . . J. M. G. Le Cl zio, another French Nobel laureate, says it best in his foreword: 'This is at once the clearest, the purest, and the most complex' of Modiano's novels. --Michael Autrey, Booklist (starred review)

Author Information

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.

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