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Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio France

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born in Nice, southern France, in 1940. His father was English and his mother French, but they were truly from Mauritius.When he was eight he joined his father in Nigeria, where his father served as a surgeon in the British army. He studied in Nice, Bristol, and earned a master’s degree in 1964, with his thesis “Loneliness in Michaux’s Writing”.

During his military service in Thailand, he denounced child prostitution and was sent to Mexico. Later, he spent more than four years in Panama, studying indigenous tribes.

Le Clézio was hailed as an important writer in 1963, with his first published book “Le Procès-verbal”, which won the Prix Renaudot and was nominated for the Goncourt. In 1980, “Desert", his stories about a Morrocan immigrant and her ancestor, brought international recognition.

Le Clézio has written more than thirty books, which include novels, essays and translations of Amerindian mythology.

In 2008, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for being an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization”.

Le Clézio splits his time between Albuquerque in New Mexico, Nice and Paris.

Books in English:

-The Interrogation

-Fever

-The Flood

-Terra Amata

-The Book of Flights : an Adventure Story

-War

-The Giants

-The Mexican Dream, or, The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations

-The Prospector

-Onitsha

-The Round & Other Cold Hard Facts

-Wandering Star: A Novel