Chinwe Ochu
14 October 2008
Abuja — French President, Nicholas Sarkozy has said that the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Jean- Marie Le Clezio is "a child of Nigeria and Mauritius, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts", adding that Le Clezio "is a citizen of the world, a child of all continents and of all cultures".
According to a press statement issued by the French Embassy in Nigeria, the Embassy "hails the decision of the Swedish Academy to award the 2008 Nobel Prize of Literature to Jean-Marie Le Clezio, the French writer who spent part of his childhood in Nigeria. Le Clezio's years in Nigeria were a truly unforgettable experience, both on a personal and artistic point of view."
The statement continued: "Born in 1940, Le Clezio moved to Nigeria at the age of 8, when his father, who had already lived in Nigeria during the second World War, was stationed as a doctor in the British army.
This was a determining period in his life as he started writing then."While in Nigeria, he wrote two short novels : Un long Voyage (A long journey) and Oradi noir (Black Oradi). Between 1963 and 2008, Le Clezio published some 43 books, reporting his experiences all around the world during endless journeys.
But he never forgot Nigeria. In 1991, he published "Onitsha", in which he explored the world of childhood through his own history." The embassy emphasized: "Africa has had a long lasting impact on Le Clezio, who wrote L'Africain (The African), in 2004, in which the author recalls his past, the story of his family, the relationship between a young boy and his aloof father. Africa, its presence, its atmosphere, its landscapes, revealed the young man to himself."
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