French writer wins Nobel prize

2008-10-09 15:35

Stockholm - France's Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for works characterised by "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and focused on the environment, especially the desert.

Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honoured in 2000.

The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors. Last year's prize went to Doris Lessing of Britain.

The academy called Le Clezio an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".

Le Clezio made his breakthrough as a novelist with Desert, in 1980, a work the academy said "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".

A masterpiece

That novel, which also won Le Clezio a prize from the French Academy, is considered a masterpiece. It describes the ordeal of Lalla, a woman from the Tuareg nomadic tribe of the Sahara Desert, as she adapts to civilization imposed by colonial France at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Swedish Academy said Le Clezio from early on "stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels Terra Amata, The Book of Flights, War and The Giants".

Le Clezio has spent much of his time living in New Mexico in recent years. He has long shied away from public life, spending much of his time travelling, often in the world's various deserts.

He has published several dozen books, including novels and essays. The most famous are tales of nomads, meditations on the desert and childhood memories. He has also explored the mythologies of native Americans, who have long fascinated him.

Great diversity

Academy Permanent Secretary Horace Engdahl called Le Clezio a writer of great diversity.

"He has gone through many different phases of his development as a writer and has come to include other civilizations, other modes of living than the Western, in his writing," Engdahl said.

Asked how he thought the prize would be received in the United States, given Engdahl's recent controversial comments about American literature, he said he had no idea.

"I'm not aware that there are today any anti-French sentiments in the US. And apart from that, Le Clezio is a cosmopolitan. He lives part of the year in New Mexico," Engdahl said.

"He's not a particularly French writer if you look at him from a strictly cultural point of view. So I don't think this choice will give rise to any anti-French comments," he said. "I would be very sad if that was the case."

Since Japanese writer Kenzaburo Oe won the award in 1994, the selections have had a distinctly European flavour.

Since then 12 Europeans, including Le Clezio, have won the prize. The last US writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993.

- AP