France's Le Clezio takes Nobel Prize in Literature

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, a novelist who was born in Nice, France, and spent a brief time in Nigeria as a child, has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Le Clezio, 68, has won the award, equivalent to $1.6 million Cdn, for his distinguished work throughout his life.

On Thursday, the Swedish Academy, which decides the winner of the prestigious prize, called him an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

He made his literary breakthrough with Desert, a 1980 work the Nobel academy praised for its "magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert."

He also won a prize from the French Academy for the work.

His recent works include 2007's Ballaciner, which the academy called a "deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film."

He has also written several books for children, including Lullaby in 1980 and Balaabilou in 1985.