Nobel News: Peace Prize to Malala; Modiano Titles in English

The Nobel Peace Prize, announced this morning in Oslo, is being shared by Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi, from Pakistan and India, respectively, who were cited for "their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education."

The committee commented further: "Despite her youth, Malala Yousafzay has already fought for several years for the right of girls to education, and has shown by example that children and young people, too, can contribute to improving their own situations. This she has done under the most dangerous circumstances. Through her heroic struggle she has become a leading spokesperson for girls' rights to education."

Yousafzai, 17, is the author of I Am Malala: The Story of the Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, published a year ago by Little, Brown. In the book, she recounted her life, the attack against her by a Taliban assassin that severely wounded her and her support of the right of girls to education. (A young readers edition of the book was published in August.)

Another related title is the photo-essay Every Day Is Malala Day by Rosemary McCarney, with Plan International (Second Story Press, $18.95), published in May, which documents the impact Malala Yousafzai has made on children around the world. It shows girls in Peru writing letters, girls listening to Malala's recordings in El Salvador, girls in school uniforms in Nicaragua releasing balloons, and smiling girls in school hallways in Brazil.

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U.S. publishers reacted quickly to yesterday's announcement that French novelist Patrick Modiano has won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.

Yale University Press is moving up the pub date for Suspended Sentences: Three Novellas, translated by Mark Polizzotti. Originally scheduled to appear in February, the book, consisting of Afterimage, Suspended Sentences and Flowers of Ruin, will be published in November.

The three novellas were originally published separately, but, the press said, they "form a single, compelling whole, haunted by the same gauzy sense of place and characters. Orphaned children, mysterious parents, forgotten friends, enigmatic strangers--each appears in this three-part love song to a Paris that no longer exists."

David R. Godine, which has published three of Modiano's works in English--Catherine Certitude (1993), Honeymoon (1995) and Missing Person (2005)--plans to reprint all of them as soon as possible and noted that "some stock is available."

Honeymoon was the first book in Godine's Verba Mundi series, which focuses on modern world literature. The publisher commented: "We owe many thanks to French publisher Gallimard. When David Godine went to the Frankfurt Book Fair years ago, he asked, 'Who are the great French writers who have never been published in English?' He signed Modiano, J.M.G. Le Clezio and Sylvie Germain."

Modiano's Nobel is the second for Godine. In 2008, Le Clezio, author of The African, Desert and Prospector, won the literature prize.

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