STOCKHOLM, Oct. 9 -- French author Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, on Thursday in Stockholm.

"The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2014 is awarded to the French author Patrick Modiano, for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation," Englund said at the Swedish Academy on Thursday.

Modiano's works centre on topics such as memory, oblivion, identity and guilt.

"Rather often his tales are built on an autobiographical foundation, or on events that took place during the German occupation," said the Swedish Academy in a statement.