J.M.G. Le Clézio was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2008. He was born in Nice, France, in 1940 to a French mother and her first-cousin, a Mauritian doctor of French origin who, being born in Mauritius when the island was under British rule, held a British passport. However, the family was completely Francophone. Jean-Marie Le Clézio has travelled extensively and is articulate in English and Spanish, but his true homeland is very much the French language. He spends his time between France (Nice, Paris and Brittany), and Albuquerque New Mexico.He has published more than 40 books since he won the Renaudot Prize in 1963, age 23, with Le Procès-verbal (The Interrogation), and his works have been translated around the world into 36 languages.

"Beautifully translated by Simon Watson-Taylor" Sunday Telegraph "Persons still in two minds about the meaning of life would do well to study War" -- Martin Amis "An author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization" -- Nobel Prize Committee "A density of marvellous prose shot through with jagged lightning-flashes of perception...What a writer!" Sunday Times