And the Nobel Prize for Literature Goes To...

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Who? And members of the media media covering the book world scatter to frantically Google this French author (the first to win in 23 years) with whom I am not familiar, even though he was considered the favorite.*

The biggest news this year is that, as foreshadowed last week, the committee did not pick an American to win. (Wouldn't it have made for a great bait and switch had they done that?) I think it was imprudent for the Academy secretary to say that Europe is the center of the literary world -- seems pretty shortsighted -- but I'm not sure where I would pick as that center.

Good thing he already has plans for a platform: When asked in 2001 what he would do as a Nobel winner, he said

I don't know for the Nobel prize but I know what I would like to talk about publicly. I would like to talk about the war that kills children. This, for me, is the most terrible thing of our age. Literature is also a means of reminding people of this tragedy and bringing it back to centre stage. [International Business Times]

As for the works of this "ecologically engaged" "explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization," if you can't read French, it looks like you can pick from THE MEXICAN DREAM, THE ROUND AND OTHER COLD HARD FACTS and ONITSHA. I have not read any of these; if you have, let me know!

*Out of the last 10 years, I have never had of 3 of the authors prior to their Nobel elevation (along with Le Clézio, I was introduced to Gao Xingjian and Imre Kertész because of this committee).