French Novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio Wins Nobel Prize
French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday for his “poetic adventure” and “sensual ecstasy.”
The Swedish organization said Le Clezio, 68, was an “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”
The Swedish Academy said the author “stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels ‘Terra Amata,’ ‘The Book of Flights,’ ‘War’ and ‘The Giants,’” in words that cannot help but make one wonder wheter politics were involved in the decision to give the Nobel Prize to Le Clezio.
He made his breakthrough in 1980 with the novel “Desert.” A work the academy said “contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants.”
Earlier, Le Clezio won a prize from the French Academy for the same work.
The French author was born in Nice in 1940 after which he and his parents moved to Nigeria when Le Clezio was eight years old. His most recent works include 2007’s “Ballaciner,” a work the academy called a “deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film and the importance of film” in his own life.
Le Clezio contributes to Europe’s significant success this year in the Nobel Prizes. Several citizens of European countries have won Nobel Prizes in recent days (such as in medicine), marking a distinct change from last year when the United States was by far the most successful country, and Europe won next to nothing.
Asia too performed quite well, with Nobel Prizes in physics. The United States thus far won in the category chemistry.
Two more prizes will be awarded in the coming days; the Nobel Prizes in peace and economy will be awarded respectively Friday and Monday.
Favorites for the peace prize are Chinese activist Hu Jia, possibly together with his wife Zeng Jinyan, and if not, then to Vietnamese monk Thich Quang Do or to Russian human rights lawyer Lidia Yusupova.
Good new! Cocorico!
But, for your information, Michael, there is no Nobel price of economy, but a price of Economic sciences, distributed by the Swedish Bank, in memoriam Alfred Nobel.