J. M. G. Le Clézio

Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940 to a family with deep Mauritian roots; his father served as a doctor in colonial Nigeria, a childhood journey he later wrote into Onitsha. His debut, Le Procès-verbal, won the Prix Renaudot when he was twenty-three and made him the photogenic face of the French avant-garde.

Then he deserted it. Years in Mexico and Panama in the late sixties and seventies, including long stays with the Emberá people and translations of Maya sacred texts, broke his style open: landscape, migration, and silence replaced experiment. Désert (1980) announced the second, greater career.

He has lived between Mauritius, New Mexico, and Nice ever since. The 2008 Nobel called him an 'explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.'