Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born on April 13, 1940, in Nice, France, to parents with strong family ties to Mauritius.⁠[1][2]

His family was of Breton descent and had emigrated to Mauritius in the 18th century, where relatives worked as bankers for generations. His father, a doctor, was of British heritage, and the family was bilingual in French and English.⁠[3][1]

At the age of eight Le Clézio moved with his family to Nigeria, where his father had worked as a doctor during the Second World War; the family returned to Nice in 1950.⁠[2]

He began writing at the age of seven or eight, producing poems, sagas, tales and short stories, none of which was published before his first novel.⁠[3]

In 1958–1959 Le Clézio studied English at the University of BristolUniversity of BristolThe University of Bristol is a research university in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It began as University College, Bristol, which opened in 1876, became a university under a royal charter in 1909 and is a member of the Russell Group.Open the full entry; he completed his undergraduate degree at the Institut d’Études Littéraires in Nice in 1963 and took a master’s degree at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964.⁠[2][4]

In September 1963 Gallimard published his first novel, Le procès-verbal (The Interrogation in English), which won the Prix Renaudot.⁠[3][2]

Long stays in Mexico and Central America from 1970 to 1974 were of decisive significance for his work.⁠[2]

During the 1970s he lived among indigenous peoples in Panama for several years, an experience that changed his view of life, art and people.⁠[1]

In 1980 Gallimard published the novel Désert, his major breakthrough, whose flowing prose contrasts with the more experimental style of his earlier work. That year the Académie française awarded him the Grand Prix de Littérature Paul Morand.⁠[1][3][2][5]

In 1983 he wrote a doctoral thesis on the early history of Mexico at the University of Perpignan.⁠[2]

Le Clézio first visited Korea in 2001 and became a frequent visitor. In 2007 he spent a year as a visiting professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.⁠[6]

From the fall semester of 2007 he taught the course “Contemporary French Literature Critique” for senior French literature majors, asking students to analyze, from their own viewpoints, works by French women novelists well known in France but less known in Korea.⁠[7]

On October 9, 2008, the Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 was awarded to Le Clézio as “author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” He received the full prize alone.⁠[8][1]

On December 7, 2008, Le Clézio delivered his Nobel Lecture, Dans la forêt des paradoxes (In the forest of paradoxes), at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, introduced by Horace Engdahl, the Academy’s Permanent Secretary. The lecture opens with the question of why people write.⁠[9]

In the lecture he recalled Elvira, an Emberá storyteller he had met in the Darién forest of Central America, calling her “a great artist, in the best sense of the term,” and dedicated the prize to her.⁠[9]

On December 10, 2008, Horace Engdahl delivered the presentation speech at the award ceremony. At the Nobel Banquet in Stockholm City Hall that evening, Le Clézio spoke of literature as offering an exchange and said it is “probably the best school we can give to our children.”⁠[10][11]

In 2011 Le Clézio was appointed an honorary professor at Nanjing University.⁠[12]

He later served as a resident professor at the university’s Institute of Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Sciences, teaching undergraduates, and signed an agreement with President Lyu Jian to continue working with the university in 2019.⁠[13]

In 2015 Le Clézio received China’s Friendship Award, the highest honor the Chinese government gives to foreign experts.⁠[12]

On December 14, 2017, the Korean edition of Le Clézio’s Seoul-set novel Bitna was published by Seoul Selection, translated by Song Ki-jung, a professor in Ewha Womans University’s French department; the English edition, Bitna: Under the Sky of Seoul, translated by Brother Anthony of Taizé, was due out days later, and the French edition was planned for the following March with Stock. It was his first novel about Seoul, drawing on many real-life stories he heard from people in the city during his stay.⁠[6]

In the autumn of 2019 Le Clézio gave lectures at Nanjing University; that year he also attended the first Guanyinshan International Literature and Ecological Culture Symposium in Dongguan.⁠[14]

Le Clézio writes prose and has published more than 40 works.⁠[1]

His early works include La fièvre (1965), Le déluge (1966), L’extase matérielle (1967), Terra amata (1967), Le livre des fuites (1969), La guerre (1970) and Les géants (1973).⁠[2]

From the mid-1970s to the early 1990s he published works including Voyages de l’autre côté (1975), L’inconnu sur la terre (1978), Mondo et autres histoires (1978), Trois villes saintes (1980), Le chercheur d’or (1985), Voyage à Rodrigues (1986), Le rêve mexicain ou la pensée interrompue (1988), Onitsha (1991), Étoile errante (1992) and Diego et Frida (1993).⁠[2]

Later works include La quarantaine (1995), Poisson d’or (1996), Révolutions (2003), L’Africain (2004), Ourania (2006), Raga : approche du continent invisible (2006), Ballaciner (2007) and Ritournelle de la faim (2008).⁠[2]

His work highlights different cultures in different times, challenges the dominance of Western civilization and criticizes the materialistic superficiality of modern society.⁠[1]

In his 2008 presentation speech Horace Engdahl described Le Clézio’s early books as “a verbal ‘big bang’” and said Le Clézio’s books honor eccentrics who have preserved their ties with their origin; he said that Le Clézio later linked his experience in Central America with his family’s history of migration to Mauritius, which paved the way for works such as Révolutions and L’Africain, and called the Bedouin heroine of Désert “an image of humanity before the Fall that came with the use of money.”⁠[10]

Engdahl also said that his open form merges the novel with travel writing and witness literature, and called him “a hopeful author.”⁠[10]

Le Clézio has taught at universities in Bangkok, Mexico City, Boston, Austin and Albuquerque, among other places.⁠[2]

He and his wife, Jemia, divide their time between Nice, Mauritius and Albuquerque in the United States; at the time of the award his residence was given as France and Mauritius.⁠[1]

The University of Bristol lists Le Clézio on its “Nobel Prizes and Fellowships” page among the Nobel laureates connected with the university, describing him as a writer who studied English there.⁠[4]