The announcement of the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 for the nominally French novelist Le Clézio, is a recognition of the literary excellence outside the reigning European/American monopoly. Though born in France, Le Clézio is truly a "citizen of the world", as he experienced diverse cultures and lived among the natives of America, Africa, and of those in the Indian Ocean. His literary work, commencing with Le Procès-verbal (1963), is a product of his transcultural experience and has the strength of an inclusive cultural response. His literary concerns range from the depiction of clash of cultures of North Africa and Europe, to that between city and country. He is keenly aware of the onslaught of cultural globalization, and yet he emerges as a cosmopolitan author, endowed with an eloquent voice of integration. The present paper on the Nobel Laureate's contribution is a modest attempt at an assessment of his stature as a global cultural integrationist.

The announcement of the choice of the peripheral French novelist J G M Le Clézio for the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 is as surprising as it is eminently well- deserved. His name was considered for the honor several times in the past but none really thought that he would really make it, since he was not well-known in the English literary world. It is for this reason that Horace Engdahl, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy, came down acerbically on "the isolation and insularity" of the Americans, and by implication, the British, literary world. Though he exaggerated his contention, there is some truth in his observation that Europe is the center of the literary world. The truth would appear to be that more significant literature is being created by writers to whom English is not the mother tongue. The literary excellence of the works of writers from Africa, the Carribean, and India, as evidenced by the plethora of international awards won, is a testimony to their achievement. The award of the Nobel Prize for the Chinese émigré in France, Gao Xingjian in 2000, V S Naipaul in 2001, and Orhan Pamuk (of Turkey) in 2006, is no stroke of happy chance, but a due recognition of the intrinsic worth of the non-native literary contributions.

Though born at Nice in France, Le Clézio has a mixed parentage: his mother is French and his father a British doctor, working in Mauritius. He has a strong nomadic heritage coming down from his ancestors who had moved from Brittany to Mauritius. Jeane Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born on April 13, 1940, in Nice, France, had his early education in Mauritius, studied English at Bristol University, UK, graduated from Institute d'Etudes Literaires at Nice, obtained Postgraduate degree from the University of Aix-en-Provence and doctoral degree from the University of Perpignan. Le Clézio lived for a while in Africa, taught at colleges in Mexico City, Bangkok, Boston, Austin, Albuquerque and Seoul, Korea. He lived among Embera Indians in Panama. He married a Moroccan lady. With his constant border crossing, he could be truly called "the citizen of the world",
as described by the President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, and a "cosmopolitan author", as aptly characterized by Horace Engdahl. His sensitive semi-autobiographical novel, Onitsha (1991), records the multiplicity of his cultural encounters and inclusive responses.

English Studies Journal, the peripheral French novelist, the Nobel Prize in Literature, the English literary world, literary contributions, working in Mauritius, early education in Mauritius, cultural encounters, ecology, social interests, transcultural experience, endorses integration