Stockholm - Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, who won
the Nobel prize for literature on Thursday, is a 'cosmopolitan author
and nomad' with European roots, the Nobel academy's permanent
secretary Horace Engdahl told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in an
exclusive interview.
Frenchman Le Clezio was 'not a classical European author' but a
cosmopolitan and nomad, Engdahl said, adding: 'He belongs to several
cultures and has lived large parts of his life outside Europe'. Le
Clezio's writing was strongly influenced by this, he said.
He would have regarded Le Clezio as a 'difficult author' at the
beginning of the writer's literary career in the 1970s, Engdahl said.
At that time, Le Clezio had been writing in the 'French style': 'As
widespread at the time, his prose was rather forced,' said Engdahl.
'But since then, he has come a long way and he has become an
epicist whose novels can be read by everybody,' Engdahl told dpa.
'I would call his style caring,' he said.
Asked whether the award for Le Clezio matched earlier comments by
Engdahl that Europe was the world's literary centre, the academy
spokesman said Le Clezio's roots were embedded in French literature.
'Le Clezio's way of travelling is typical of Europeans, when they
identify with foreign cultures and describe these intensively,' he
said, adding Europeans aspired to the role of 'the universal human
being.'
'I don't expect any controversy as a result of this award,'
Engdahl said.
In France, Le Clezio was widely appreciated as the country's
leading contemporary author. 'And the biggest controversy about a
Nobel Prize winner is usually in his own country,' he said, adding:
'We saw that also in 1999 with (German) Guenther Grass.'
The Nobel award comes with a 10-million-
kronor (1.5 million dollars) prize. The academy cited him as an
'author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, an
explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.'
He was born April 13, 1940, in Nice. Roughly a dozen of his
some 40 works have been translated into English. The most recent
translation was The Wandering Star: A novel.
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