SOURCE: Brown, John L. Review of La Quarantaine, by J. M. G. Le Clézio. World Literature Today 70, no. 4 (fall 1996): 909.

In the following review, Brown offers a positive assessment of La Quarantaine.

From the start, J. M. G. Le Clézio has been considered a maverick, but a maverick of genius. In 1963, at the age of twenty-three, his first novel, Le Procès-verbal, received the Prix Renaudot. Since then, he has published some twenty-three works, of which La Quarantaine is the most recent. They take place all over the globe, from South and Central America (Le Clézio has a particular fondness for Mexico and has translated some ancient Mayan poetry) to India and Africa. He spends little time in France, preferring to live in Albuquerque (New Mexico) or in Michoacán (Mexico). He even refused to return to Paris to sign copies of La Quarantaine for Gallimard's...