Jean Marie Gustave Le Clézio achieved instant celebrity when his first novel, Le Procès-verbal (1963; translated as The Interrogation, 1964), published when he was twenty-three, received the Prix Théophraste Renaudot. Form that time he has been consistently treated as one of France's major contemporary literary figures. His second novel, Le Déluge (1966; translated as The Flood, 1967), was one of only four French novels recommended in the Quinzaine Littéraire as among "the best books" of 1966, and his essay L'Extase matérielle (Material Ecstasy, 1967) was similarly listed the following year. His novel Désert was chosen by the staff of Lire as the best French book (nonfiction as well as fiction) of the year in 1980, second only to Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song among books from all countries published in France at that time. Many of his works have been best-sellers...