J.M.G. Le Clézio

French novelist J.M.G. Le Clézio has won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, it was announced by the Swedish Academy in Stockholm today. One of France’s best-known contemporary writers, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940 and has published more than 20 novels and nonfiction works. He has won many prizes, including the Prix Renaudot in 1963 for his first novel, Le Procès-Verbal, a study of madness. His most recent works translated into English include the novels The Prospector, Onitsha and Wandering Star. The Swedish Academy praised Le Clézio as the “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization. With this win, he is the fourteenth French winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.”