STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) – France's Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the 2008 Nobel Prize in literature yesterday for works characterised by "poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy" and focused on the environment, especially the desert.

Le Clezio, 68, is the first French writer to win the prestigious award since Chinese-born Frenchman Gao Xingjian was honoured in 2000 and the 14th since the Nobel Prizes began in 1901.

The decision was in line with the Swedish Academy's recent picks of European authors and followed days of vitriolic debate about whether the jury was anti-American. sFrench President Nicolas Sarkozy hailed Le Clezio's win as a sign of France's worldwide cultural influence.

"A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clezio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveller, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalised world."

The academy called Le Clezio, who also holds Mauritian citizenship, an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation".