Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, pictured in Cannes, southern France, has won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature. (Kirsty Wigglesworth/Associated Press)

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a novelist who was born in Nice, France, and spent a brief time in Nigeria as a child, has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Le Clézio, 68, has won the award, equivalent to $1.6 million Cdn, for his distinguished work throughout his life.

On Thursday, the Swedish Academy, which decides the winner of the prestigious prize, called him an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

Le Clézio was born in southern France in 1940. When he was eight years old, he moved to Nigeria with his family for two years, where his father had been a doctor during the Second World War.

He made his literary breakthrough with Desert, a 1980 work the Nobel academy praised for its "magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert."

He also won a prize from the French Academy for the work.

His recent works include 2007's Ballaciner, which the academy called a "deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film."

He has also written several books for children, including Lullaby in 1980 and Balaabilou in 1985.

Le Clézio has taught in Bangkok, Boston and Mexico City.

One hundred and five writers have won the Nobel literature prize since the prizes were established by Alfred Nobel in 1901.

Last year's prize went to Doris Lessing of the United Kingdom.

With files from the Associated Press