J.M.G. Le Clezio wins Nobel Prize for Literature

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French writer J.M.G. Le Clézio. Photo: EFE

Excerpts from the Swedish Academy's citation awarding the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature to French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio.

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 is awarded to the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.''

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio was born on April 13, 1940, in Nice, but both parents had strong family connections with the former French colony, Mauritius (conquered by the British in 1810). At the age of eight, Le Clezio and his family moved to Nigeria, where the father had been stationed as a doctor during the Second World War. During the voyage to Nigeria, he began his literary career with two books “Un long Voyage'' and “Oradi noir,'' which even contained a list of "forthcoming books.''

Even early on, Le Clezio stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels “Terra amata'' (1967; Terra Amata, 1969), “Le livre des fuites'' (1969; The Book of Flights, 1971), “La guerre'' (1970; War, 1973) and “Les geants'' (1973; The Giants, 1975).

His definitive breakthrough as a novelist came with “Desert'' (1980), for which he received a prize from the French Academy. This work contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert, contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants. The main character, the Algerian guest worker Lalla, is a utopian antithesis to the ugliness and brutality of European society.

“L'Africain,'' the story of the author's father, is at once a reconstruction, a vindication, and the recollection of a boy who lived in the shadow of a stranger he was obliged to love. He remembers through the landscape: Africa tells him who he was when, at the age of eight, he experienced the family's reunion after the separation during the war years.

Among Le Clezio's most recent works are “Ballaciner'' (2007), a deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film and its importance in the author's life.

A new work, “Ritournelle de la faim,” has just been published. Le Clezio has also written several books for children and youth, for example “Lullaby'' (1980), “Celui qui n'avait jamais vu la mer suivi de La montagne du dieu vivant'' (1982) and “Balaabilou'' (1985).

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was already awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1963.