French author Le Clezio wins Nobel Prize for literature
The Nobel academy praises the world-traveling writer for his 'new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy.'
PARIS -- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, a globe-trotting French author whose books explore indigenous and nomadic cultures in Latin America, Africa and Asia, today won the Nobel Prize for literature.
Le Clezio, 68, has written more than 32 books, and has won critical acclaim and a devoted following in his native France. But he has a relatively low profile even here and is largely unknown in the United States.
In announcing the prize, the Nobel academy in Stockholm called Le Clezio an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner were among leaders celebrating the award. Kouchner, himself an inveterate traveler as a former head of Doctors Without Borders, praised Le Clezio's vast interests, including the pre-Columbian cultures of Mexico and the deserts of Morocco.
"From Albuquerque to Seoul, from New York to Panama, from London to Lagos, Jean-Marie Le Clezio lives, travels, crosses and loves a great number of countries, of peoples, of civilizations, of cultures," Kouchner said in a statement.
The selection marked another year in which the academy declined to pick better-known literary figures who have yet to be honored, such as the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. The academy has also been criticized in recent years for repeatedly failing to honor American writers. The last U.S. author to win a Nobel was Toni Morrison in 1993.
Le Clezio spends most of his time in Albuquerque and avoids public life, preferring to travel to remote and rugged places and indulge his fascination with the environment. Le Monde newspaper described him today as a tall, blond man with the "photogenic allure of an elegant cowboy" and said he is known as "the nomad writer."
Interviewed in French by a Swedish radio station, Le Clezio said he was "very moved and very touched" by the award.
"It is a great honor for me," he said, according to a report by Agence France-Press.
Le Clezio was born in Nice on April 13, 1940, and spent much of his childhood in Africa. One of his major works is "Desert," a 1980 novel about a Touareg woman from the Sahara desert.
sebastian.rotella@latimes.com
