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Last week, a member of the selection committee for the Nobel Prize for Literature set off a controversy when he claimed American writers were too "insular" to win the award — and now they've gone and given it to an author from France! Nice-born novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was named the winner this morning and cited by the committee as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization." Le Clézio is responsible for more than 40 books, only 12 of which have been translated into English. He is generally regarded as way less funny than last year's recipient, Doris Lessing.

French Writer Wins Nobel Prize [NYT]