Praise for The African "Le Clézio is ever the master at rendering existence at the level of sensation with a daring and admirable freshness of language."--Peter Brooks, The New York Times /p> "J.M.G. Le Clézio has written repeatedly about ecology, landscape and colonialism, paying particular attention to Africa, Mexico, Central America and his family's native Mauritius. Given that he has produced more than 40 books, The African can represent only one aspect of, in the words of the Nobel committee, an author of new departures.Still, this brief memoir provides a good entry point, honoring, as it does, Le Clézio s father and mother and his own lost African childhood."--Michael Dirda, Washington Post "The past has receded, become so distant that no memory, no attempt to summon it can possibly bring it back.

Nobel Prize winner J. M. G. Le Clézio tells us as much, even as his slim memoir, The African , valiantly attempts to call back a lost time. Le Clézio's book is as much a speculative biography of a man he now realizes he hardly knew as a memoir of a complicated childhood. It is a memory palace, a deliberately disordered evocation of the past that hopscotches through time."--Saul Austerlitz, Boston Globe "A slim yet resonant autobiographical entry from the Nobel laureate's early years in West Africa.A vivid depiction of a splintered childhood and the lovely wholeness procured from it.

"-- Kirkus Review.