In the year since Patrick Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature, translations of his works have glutted the shelves. Part of this influx has to do with the general unwillingness of American presses to publish an international writer before he’s been awarded an international prize; part of it has to do with the number of books that Modiano has written. More than thirty have appeared in French; a dozen are now available in English, with more forthcoming and Modiano continuing to produce at age seventy. Faced with this surfeit, the reader will ask a version of the question…