Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio Winner Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French novelist, children’s author, and essayist. The announcement followed days of literary argument over remarks by the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl, suggesting that American writers were influenced too much by American popular culture to qualify for the prize. Engdahl had also asserted the Europe was "the center of the literary world.” The last American writer to win the prize was Toni Morrison in 1993. The Nobel Prize Committee called Le Clézio an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” Last year the prize was awarded to the British author Doris Lessing. Le Clézio's novel Désert (1980)won a prize from the French Academy and established him as one of France's leading writers. His other novels include:Le procès-verbal (1963),Fever(1966),The Flood(1967),and Terra Amata(1969). Le Clézio has published collections of essays describing his long stays in Mexico and Central America. His books for children and youth include Lullaby (1980), and Balaabilou (1985). The Nobel Prize Committee stated that "the emphasis of Le Clézio’s work has increasingly moved in the direction of an exploration of the world of childhood and of his own family history. Recent works include: L’Africain(2004)and Ballaciner(2007).