French author Patrick Modiano expressed surprise at being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature this year and considered it "unreal to be compared with people that (he) had admired."

"I wasn't expecting it at all. It was like I was a bit detached from it all, as if a doppelganger with my name had won," Modiano told reporters late on Thursday.

"I wonder how they explained this choice, I'm keen to know why they have chosen me," he added.

According to Patrick Modiano's editor, Antoine Gallimard, "(It) is a great surprise for us and a wonderful day. We would have had to wait 30 years to see another French person win the Nobel (literature) Prize..."

The Nobel Academy described the French novelist, whose writing mostly focused on the Nazi occupation of France, as "a Marcel Proust of our time."

Modiano, 69, was born in the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt to a businessman father and an actress mother. Not known outside France, the Nobel Prize winner received the French Academy's Grand Prize in 1972 and the 2010 prix mondial Cino Del Duca for lifetime achievement by the French Institute. In 2012, he won the European Literary Award.

"Patrick Modiano is one of the greatest writers of recent years. This is well-deserved," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after the prize was awarded. Enditem

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