French Author wins Nobel Prize for Literature!

The Nobel Foundation announced on Thursday that the French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.

Nobel Prize for Literature, 2008: Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, Mauritian-born French.

The committee said Le Clezio was an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Le Clezio has written some 30 books including novels, essays, and short stories. Critics have found him hard to define, with his writing and subject matter having changed considerably over time, according to an article in Label France, a magazine published by the French government.

His work reflects ecological concerns, rebellion against the intolerance of Western nationalist thought, and his fascination with Native Americans, according to the magazine.

Le Clezio told the interviewer his books were less a matter of expressing ideas, and more an

Le Clezio said he has always felt like an exile in his own country because of his family's roots in Mauritius, a mixed culture with Indian, African, and European influences.

"I grew up telling myself that there was a somewhere else which embodied my true homeland," he told the magazine. "One day I would go there and I would know what it was. So in France I always thought of myself a little bit of an 'outsider.' On the other hand, I love the French language, which is perhaps my true country! But thinking of France as a nation, I must say I have rarely identified with its priorities."

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Although Le Clezio reminds me of V.S.Naipaul, another Nobel Prize winner who constantly speaks about displacement and being in a permanent state of exile he doesnt seem to be totally rootless or unable to find home.There is some kind of hope in him, unlike Naipaul.Will have to read Le Clezio's books to learn more.

Nobel Prize for Literature, 2001: V.S. Naipaul, Trinidad-born Briton of Indian origin.