In a not so surprising announcement - going by the Nobel Academy’s notoriety for secrecy - this year’s Nobel Literature Prize has gone to Frenchman Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Clezio who in 1994 was shown a survey conducted by the French literary magazine Lire to be considered by 13% of the readers to be the greatest living French language writer was given the award for being the “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.”

Top favourites for this year’s prize included Romanian novelist Herta Muller, Japanese author Haruki Murakami, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru and Danish poet Inger Christensen.

The permanent secretary of the Nobel Academy Horace Engdahl caused a stir last week when he told The Associated Press that the United States is too insular and ignorant to challenge Europe as the center of the literary world. His comment took the mind of Nobel watchers off American favouites like Philip Roth, Joyce Carol Oates and Don DeLillo, and even John Ashbery.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio’s family emigrated from Brittany to the Île de France — today’s Mauritius — in the 18th century. The island came under British rule in 1810, settlers being allowed to retain their property and the use of the French language while claiming the British nationality. The family lived for a time in Africa where his father served as a surgeon in the British army.[2] His mother was a deaf mute. During the second world war, the family was separated, his father being unable to join his wife and children in Nice[3] where Le Clézio studied at the Collège littéraire universitaire. After graduation, he moved to the United States as a teacher.

A great traveler, J.M.G. Le Clézio has been writing since age seven or eight. After majoring in French literature, he became famous at 23 with his first novel, Le Procès-Verbal (The Deposition), which was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and for which he was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1963.

Biography culled from Wikipedia