Patrick Modiano was named the 107^th winner of the Nobel Prize for literature today, making him the 11^th French literature laureate in history.

Well known in France, the sixty-nine-year-old has published over twenty books, and writes children’s books, movie scripts, and novels. One of his best-known novels is Missing Person, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1978. He was born in Paris to a Jewish-Italian father and Belgian mother after World War II in July 1945, and these beginnings influence his work; themes of Jewishness and Nazi occupation recur throughout his writings.

Peter Englund, the Nobel Academy’s secretary, announced in a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, that Modiano received the award “for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation.”

“His books are always variations of the same theme, about memory, about loss, about identity, about seeking,” Englund said. “I don’t think he’s difficult to read. You can read him easily, one of his books in the afternoon, have dinner, and read another in the evening.”

The Nobel Prize comes with $1.2 million and will be formally presented at a ceremony in Stockholm this December.

Read a phone call interview with Modiano, conducted by Hélène Hernmarck of Nobel Media following the announcement. Alice Munro was last year’s Nobel Laureate in literature.