By Amber Haq 

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, the French Mauritian winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, is known for his quiet demeanour and solitary living. So it came as something of a surprise that the announcement today by the Nobel committee came trailing clouds of controversy. Last week Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Nobel committee for literature, told the Associated Press that American literature is "too isolated, too insular," and American writers "too sensitive to trends in their own mass culture." American writers haven't been very generous towards the Nobel committee, either. "You would think that the permanent secretary of an academy that pretends to wisdom but has historically overlooked Proust, Joyce and Nabokov, to name just a few non-Nobelists, would spare us the categorical lectures," New Yorker editor David Remnick told AP.

Le Clézio, however, doesn't seem to agree with Engdhal. In an impromptu press conference today at the headquarters of Gallimard, the most prestigious publishing house in 20th Century French literature, housed in a tiny enclave of left bank Paris, the author quoted numerous American contemporaries he esteems—chief among them Philip Roth. "American literature is atypical – unlike French literature it gives rise to all sorts of states, styles and authors who are distinct."

As camera flashes went off and hordes of foreign and French journalists jostled to get a seat at the conference, Clezio also defended his compatriots. The so-called 'death of French Culture,' a label conjured by a certain American newsweekly [note from editors: not Newsweek], seems to lack any foundation in Le Clézio's understanding of things. "Some people are speaking of the decline of French culture – I was not aware of it so I don't have any answer. I deny it. It's a very rich, very diversified culture so there is no risk of decline."

Le Clézio, 68, is the first French citizen to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since Gao Xinjian in 2000 and the first French Language writer to have won since Claude Simon in 1985. His prolific body of work includes over 30 novels, essays and short story collections. In the announcement earlier today the Swedish academy cited his breakthrough novel "Desert" published in 1980, describing its "magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants."