J M G Le Clézio won the prize in 2008 for his life's work, as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".
I'm not sure about that. Here's the only book of his I've read, which I picked up a couple of years ago in the Blackheath Amnesty booksale. I'm grateful that I've now given myself the incentive to read it.
The short book is a memoir about Le Clézio himself, and increasingly about his father, tracing his history as a doctor, trained in London but mainly practising in British west Africa (now Nigeria and Cameroon) before and during the Second World War. He seems to have been always a fairly contrary man, but the experience of colonialism and war made him a hard, unforgiving one, bitter at the destruction of what seemed a kind of Eden.
It's beautifully written, capturing the sights, sounds and smells of Africa, while avoiding any over-simplification or sentimentality.
It hasn't been translated into English and is probably hard to find so there'd be no point in my recommending it. Le Clézio seems better known in France as a novelist, though, and if you find one of his novels on sale - perhaps at the Amnesty sale on 16 June - it'd be worth a go.
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