Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have apparently announced (though not yet at their 'media center', last I checked ...) that they'll be publishing the English translation of Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano's latest in the US, the bestselling-in-France Pour que tu ne te perdes pas dans le quartier (see the Gallimard publicity page), in late 2015.
(MacLehose Press had previously announced it was publishing this one, and two more, in the UK.)
Alexandra Alter reports the news in The New York Times -- along with some sales figures for the few Modiano titles actually currently available in English;
Alexandra Alter reports the news in The New York Times -- along with some sales figures for the few Modiano titles actually currently available in English;
One of his most famous works, Missing Person, which is published by David R. Godine, had sold just 2,031 copies before the prize was announced in October, and has since sold more than 13,600 copies. Yale University Press has sold more than 30,000 copies of Suspended Sentences, a collection of three novellas by Mr. Modiano that was published last month.At The Washington Post's Style Blog Ron Charles also reports on the news, in New Patrick Modiano novel coming to U.S. next fall, with the additional information that the translation will be by Euan Cameron (translator of, for example, Philippe Djian's Unforgivable book), and offering slightly different sales-numbers:
The book clubs are all adopting Missing Persons [sic], and if you're going to read a Modiano, that's the one to read. We've sold 18,000 copies. Honeymoon also did well, and his children's book [Catherine Certitude] did well.Meanwhile, an interesting titbit from Jennifer Maloney's report at the Wall Street Journal's Speakeasy weblog:
British publisher Harvill Secker UK then pulled its e-book version of Modiano's novel, The Search Warrant, off Amazon.co.uk.
It turned out that Harvill Secker never had the rights to publish the ebook -- which Modiano's French publisher, Éditions Gallimard, discovered after the Pulitzer [sic] was announced, according to Anne-Solange Noble, Gallimard's foreign-rights director.