Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has become the 14th French
writer to won the Nobel Prize in literature, being praised by the Swedish Academy as an “author of new departures,
poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below
the reigning civilization.”
The Swedish
Academy has named its
2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature and it is French-born,
dual-citizenship holding, globetrotting writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, 68.
The academy lauded Le Clézio’s focus on the environment,
particularly the desert, which has inspired him greatly in his writing. Then
again, Le Clezio has led the life of an adventurer, traveling the world,
spending ample amounts of time in the deserts of the world and recently
settling in New Mexico.
Born in 1940, Le Clézio also holds Mauritian citizenship. In
the 1970s, he lived for long periods of time in Mexico
and Central America and this, the academy
noted, left an indelible mark on his work.
A lover of nature, the academy said Le Clézio was special
from early on in his career as a writer, standing out “as an ecologically
engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels ‘Terra
Amata,’ ‘The Book of Flights,’ ‘War’ and ‘The Giants.’”
The cross-cultural citizen and writer, as described by the
academy, is the 14th French citizen to win the prestigious award since the
Nobel Prizes began in 1901. Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian is the previous
writer to have received the honor, in 2000.
Le Clézio has published over thirty works, including novels,
essays and children’s books. He first attained critical acclaim in 1980 with
the novel “Désert,” which received a prize from the French Academy.
Le Clézio and his Moroccan wife Jemia currently split their
time between Albuquerque, N. M., the writer’s
native Mauritius and Nice, France,
according to the academy.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy commended Le Clezio for his
literary triumph and used choice words to describe the significance this has
for France
and French culture. Characterizing Le Clézio as a child of Mauritius and Nigeria,
a teenager in Nice and a nomad of the American and African deserts, Sarkozy
said the Nobel Laureate is “a citizen of the world, the son of all continents
and cultures” who “embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values
in a globalized world.”
The Nobel Prizes are handed out annually on December 10, the
anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death in 1896. Banquets are also held. This year,
the Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, economics, medicine and physics will
be presented in Stockholm, while the Nobel Peace
Prize will be presented in Oslo,
Norway.
French writers to have previously received the Nobel Prize
for literature are Sully Prudhomme, Frédéric Mistral, Romain Rolland, Anatole
France, Henri Bergson, Roger Martin du Gard, André Gide, André Gide, François
Mauriac, Albert Camus, Saint-John Perse, Jean-Paul Sartre, who declined the
prize, and Claude Simon.