The Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".
J. M. G. Le Clézio was born in 1940 in Nice, France. He is a descendent of a Breton family that emigrated in the 18th century to Mauritius. He completed his undergraduate studies at the Institut d’Études Littéraires in Nice and is a Doctor of Philosophy.
Despite his extensive travels, since the age of seven or eight J. M. G. Le Clézio has never stopped writing: poems, sagas, tales, short stories, of which nothing was published until Le Procès-verbal (The Interrogation), his first novel, appeared in print in September 1963, for which he received Le Prix Renaudot. In 1980 he received Le Grand Prix Paul-Morand from the French Academy for his novel Désert.
