Stockholm - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, 58, of France was awarded this year's Nobel prize for literature, the Swedish Academy announced in Stockholm on Thursday.

The academy cited him as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, an explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

He was born April 13, 1940, in Nice. Roughly a dozen of his works have been translated into English. The most recent translation was The Wandering Star: A novel.

Le Clezio grew up with two languages, French and English, the academy said, noting that as a child he moved with his family to Nigeria where his father worked as a doctor.

He made his literary debut in 1963 with The Interrogation, the "first in a series of descriptions of crisis," the academy said.

Other themes in his writing touch on ecology - for instance in Terra Amata, The Book of Flights, and War.

Extended visits to Mexico and Central America influenced essay collections like Mydriase and Hai, and also in the 1975 novel Voyage de l'Autre Cote.

In recent years he has explored his own family history and childhood.

The award worth 10 million kronor (1.5 million dollars).

The literature prize is one of the awards endowed by Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. Earlier this week awards for medicine, physics and chemistry were announced.

On Friday, the peace prize is to be announced in Oslo.

The economic sciences prize - a prize not endowed by Nobel and awarded since 1968 - is scheduled to be announced Monday.

The award ceremonies are held December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's 1896 death in San Remo, Italy.