French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio has been awarded this year's Nobel Prize for Literature.
The 68-year-old has been honoured with the 10m kronor (Ј820,810) award for his distinguished life's work.
The Swedish Academy describes him as "an author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy."
It goes on to call him "an explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation." British author Doris Lessing won last year's prize.
Le Clezio's breakthrough as a novelist came in 1980 with Desert, a work the Swedish academy praised for its "magnificent images of a Negotiations continue for hostages release ...
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Philosopher
His most recent works include 2007's Ballaciner, a work the academy called a "deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film".
The author has also included several books for children, among them Lullaby in 1980 and Balaabilou in 1985.
He has won a number of literary honours in his native France, among them the Prix Larbaud in 1972 and the Grand Prix Jean Giono in 1997.
Born in Nice in 1940, Le Clezio spent two years as a child in Nigeria and has taught in universities in Bangkok, Boston and Mexico City.
He will receive his prize medal alongside this year's other Nobel Laureates at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December.
Winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature traditionally deliver a lecture in the Swedish city before accepting their award.
The first Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded in 1901 to the French poet and philosopher Sully Prudhomme.
Writers recognised in recent years include V S Naipaul in 2001, J M Coetzee in 2003 and Harold Pinter in 2005.
(BBC)
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