Jean-Marie Gustav de Clezio Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Born in 1940, Le Clézio first found fame in 1963 with his first novel Proces-Verbal, which was awarded the Prix Renaudot. Since then he has published a wide variety of novels, essays and short fiction. The Academy saluted his achievement, calling him an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".

He is due to receive the award of 10m Swedish Krona (815,000 pounds sterling) at a ceremony in the Swedish capital in December.

Le Clezio, known as France's "nomad novelist", lives mainly in New Mexico in the US, in near seclusion, and is the opposite of Paris's current trend for writers' navel-gazing accounts of their sex lives.

The Swedish jury hailed his scathing critiques of urban western civilisation and the "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" of his stories of native populations in Africa and Latin America. His novels, whose settings range from the Sahara to Mauritius, are expected to see a massive sales boost in Britain, where he is currently out of print and barely known.

Le Clezio, 68, last year signed an open letter with other writers appealing for French literature to be more open to the wider world. Last night he batted off talk of French cultural stagnation. "I deny it," he said. "It's a very rich, very diversified culture. There's no risk of decline."

In Paris Le Clezio is seen as one of France's greatest living writers. He says his work is defined by his mixed roots. He was born in Nice but most identifies with the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where his Breton ancestors fled in the 18th century and lived for generations before returning to France.