France's Le Clezio bags 2008 Nobel for literature

EPISTLE MAN: Le Clezio's first novel, Le proces-verbal, was published in 1963

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Stockholm: French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, whose early work in the 1960s was acclaimed for its wordplay and imagery and who later delved into childhood themes, won the 2008 Nobel prize for literature on Thursday.

The Swedish Academy, which decides the winner of the prestigious 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4 million) prize, praised Le Clezio for his adventurous novels, essays and children's literature.

The award marked the first time a French writer has won the Nobel literature prize since 2000, when it was won by Chinese writer Gao Xingjian, a political refugee who had settled in France and become a French citizen. French-born writer Claude Simon also won it in 1985.

The academy said in its statement that Le Clezio was an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation". Born in April 1940, his first novel, Le proces-verbal, was published in 1963.

"As a young writer in the aftermath of existentialism and the nouveau roman, he was a conjurer who tried to lift words above the degenerate state of everyday speech and to restore to them the power to invoke an essential reality," the academy said.

"The emphasis in Le Clezio's work has increasingly moved in the direction of an exploration of the world of childhood and of his own family history," the academy wrote.

The run-up to this year's prize has been embroiled in controversy after the permanent secretary of the award committee said last week the United States was too insular and did not participate in the "big dialogue" of literature.

Horace Engdahl of the Swedish Academy touched off a storm of angry responses from writers and critics in the United States with his comments, which were made to a news agency.

The last time an American won the prize was in 1993 when it went to novelist Toni Morrison. Nice-born Le Clezio moved to Nigeria with his family at an early age. He wrote his first works, Un long voyage and Oradi Noir, during the month-long journey.

Engdahl, speaking at the news conference to announce the laureate, said: "His works have a cosmopolitan character. Frenchman, yes, but more so a traveller, a citizen of the world, a nomad."

All but one of the prizes were established in the will of 19th century dynamite tycoon Alfred Nobel and have been handed out since 1901. The economics award was established by Sweden's central bank in 1968.