Le Clézio, << leh klayz yoh >> J.-M. G. (1940-…), a French author, won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature. Le Clézio writes in a wide variety of forms, including novels, short stories, essays, and stories about childhood. His books reflect experimental styles, especially the interior monologue, in which the story is told from the point of view of the narrator and includes the character’s thoughts and reactions to events. Le Clézio’s writings frequently portray conflicts between the modern technological world of Western civilization and non-Western cultures. A Le Clézio character’s battle with a cold, mechanized, industrial society often leads to despair, alienation, and even insanity.
Le Clézio gained fame with his first novel, The Interrogation (1963). The book describes a young man wandering through a city, recording his mental and physical sensations. The young man finally ends up in a mental hospital. Le Clézio wrote about how modern life, machines, and technology corrupt art, communication, and language in the novel The Giants (1973). His novels The Gold Seeker (1985), Onitsha (1991), and The Quarantine (1995) carry autobiographical elements. His other novels include The Flood (1966), Terra Amata (1967), War (1970), and The Wandering Star (1992). His short-story collections include Fever (1965), The Unknown One on Earth (1978), and The Round: & Other Cold Hard Facts (1982).
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born on April 13, 1940, in Nice, France. He has lived and taught in many parts of the world. His interest in Central American Indians appears in the essays collected in The Mexican Dream, or The Interrupted Thought of Amerindian Civilizations (1988). One of his best-known works is Desert (1980), which deals with ancient warriors of the Sahara known as the Tuareg or “Blue People” and compares their way of life favorably with people living in industrial societies.
