(Deletes reference saying the first time a French writer had won the prize since 1985. The award was given in 2000 to Chinese writer Gao Xingjian, who had settled in France and had become a French citizen.)
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the 2008 Nobel prize for literature, the prize committee said on Thursday.
The Swedish Academy, which decides the winner of the prestigious 10 million Swedish crown ($1.4 million) prize, praised Le Clezio for his adventurous novels, essays and children's literature.
The academy said in its statement that Le Clezio was an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation."
Chinese writer Gao Xingjian, a political refugee who had settled in France and become a French citizen, won the award in 2000.
All but one of the prizes were established in the will of 19th century dynamite tycoon Alfred Nobel and have been handed out since 1901. The economics award was established by Sweden's central bank in 1968.