And it has earned the author both the 2015 Prix Goncourt for best first novel and a Facebook fatwa from a minor Muslim cleric calling for his death.The book starts as a caustic, rambling monologue told by an old man in a bar to an appropriately nameless French expat.
Salvo as a film kicked off in high gear, winning in Cannes last year both the Grand Prix in the Critics' Week and the Visionary Award.
He was shortlisted for the Booker (Flaubert's Parrot) and was the first Englishman to win both the Prix Médici and the Prix Fémina.
Modiano's entire oeuvre was honoured in 2014, when he was awarded both the Prix de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Nobel Prize.
The Group One winners Make Believe, Mondialiste and Esoterique are all expected to line up for the Mile, while Found, who has already run in both the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe and Qipco Champion Stakes this month, is among Aidan O'Brien's seven possible runners in Kentucky.
The Prince & the Pauper (24 Elm Street, 802-457-1818; www.princeandpauper.cold, in an old blacksmith shop, uses seasonal ingredients and local producers to offer both a prix fixe dinner menu and a bistro menu with everything from pizza Margherita ($13) to pecan-smoked babyback ribs ($15).
His first novel, Enter, Night was a finalist for both the Prix Aurora and the Sunburst Award.
His "400 Coups" won both the grand prix and the International Catholic Office award at the Cannes Festival of 1955.
It's not all about cream-tea tours; family favourites include the Epsom Derby and various European Grands Prix, both departing from points nationwide.
Littell, American-born but bilingual, wrote "The Kindly Ones" in French (as "Les Bienveillantes"), and it won both the Grand Prix du Roman from the Académie Française and the Prix Goncourt.
