The 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, better known with his pen name J. M. G. Le Clézio, as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization." He became the 14th French-language author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature after Claude Simon in 1985 and was followed later by Patrick Modiano in 2014.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, usually identified as J. M. G. Le Clézio, of French and Mauritian nationality, is a writer and professor. The author of over forty works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel Le Procès-Verbal and the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature for his life's work, as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".