Patrick Modiano Returns With "L'Eléphant," a New Novel of Watching and Remembering
The Nobel laureate's latest book follows a Paris neighbour nicknamed "The Elephant" as he watches those around him, and watches his own past catch up with him.
Patrick Modiano has published a new novel, "L'Eléphant," according to Le Monde. The book's central figure is Ludo Van Walle, known as "L'Eléphant," who gives the novel its title.
According to Le Monde, Van Walle spends the novel watching his Parisian neighbours much as he watches his own past, a double surveillance that the paper's review describes as a "fable merveilleusement inconfortable" — a wonderfully uncomfortable fable.
The source material does not give further plot details, a publisher, or a publication date beyond the review's appearance on 25 October. Modiano, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014, has long built his fiction around memory, surveillance and the half-lit corners of Paris, themes the new title appears to continue, though Tomeling has not read the book itself and relies here on Le Monde's brief characterization.
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