2008 Nobel for Literature goes to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio

This year's Nobel Prize for Literature winner is French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. We should be embarrassed that none of his novels seem to be available in English translation, even though his breakthrough novel, Desert, was published back in 1980. Perhaps the member of the Academy who said the U.S. is too insular to produce Nobel-worthy writers because we don't translate enough was on to something. How embarrassing for us that Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio will not be able to sell any of his works here in the U.S. immediately after this announcement because nobody seems to have been aware enough of him in this country to have translated him.