Within minutes of this month’s announcement that French author, Patrick Modiano had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, commentators offered all sorts of remarks on the achievement. Some focused on Modiano’s reluctance to engage with the media. Others remarked on the impact of the Nobel announcement (along with the Nobel Prize in Economics awarded to another Frenchman) on France’s national pride.  Others commented on the themes Modiano explores in his works – historical memory, guilt and ambiguity against the backdrop of World War II and the Holocaust. Most invoked the Swedish Academy’s citation of Modiano as “the Marcel Proust of our time” in their descriptions of the Nobel laureate designate, while mostly failing to explain what they meant by this.

Regardless of the focus of their coverage of the Nobel Prize announcement, most American news outlets mentioned Modiano’s relative obscurity outside of France. Those that took the time to discuss the literary merits of Modiano’s book often focused on an American angle to the story – the Swedish Academy’s slighting of American novelist Philip Roth … yet again.

Modiano has published approximately forty works – including novels, a children’s book and a screenplay — but only three of those works have been published in English, and Modiano’s total sales in the United States numbered under 8,000 despite the fact that his name has bandied about as a member of the short list for a Nobel Prize for some time. (Next month Yale University Press will add to available English translations with three Modiano novellas.) As the Daily Beast put it, in an article that relied on Internet searches for information about Modiano, “Who the Hell is Patrick Modiano?”

The truth is that before the announcement most of us had never before heard Modiano’s name, let alone read one of his books. And while there were perhaps other authors who should have been recognized, Malcolm Jones, the author of the Daily Beast post is right to point to the value of the Nobel Prize in certifying the literary merit of Modiano’s work, and by extension, encouraging us to read (and English language publishers to translate and to publish) an author who has a lot to say but who never before had a megaphone to amplify his voice.

Modiano is not unique, of course. Literary prizes have the potential to raise the profile of many writers – whether they are of other nationalities or published by smaller American presses. (As New York Magazine put it, “Jaws dropped when unknown author Julia Glass beat a field crowded with literary luminaries to win the National Book Award for her debut novel, Three Junes” in 2002.) But the truth is that savvy marketing and publicity campaigns by publishers often result in a handful of authors reviewed and recognized.

Obscurity does not always – or generally – make great literature, and well loved and well known works often have considerable value. (Among the favorites taught in Books@Work seminars are widely circulated and highly acclaimed Brave New World, Frankenstein and Slaughterhouse-Five.) But literary prizes like the Nobel have the power to change what we read, rescuing titles that may have been previously inaccessible to us, and empowering us to consider new points of view. I, for one, am excited to read Modiano this year. Chances are his major works will be available in English before too long. A Nobel Prize can do that.