Born in Nice in 1940 during the difficult years of the Second World War, JMG Le Clézio discovered Africa, Nigeria, where he had gone to join his father at the age of eight who worked there as a doctor in the British colonial army. , he says in Nomadic identity, “the freedom and happiness of existence”. For the Nobel literature winner, a child of war and deprivation, Africa immediately embodied a land of abundance. In this somewhat disjointed text from a conference delivered in Marrakech in 2023, the author of Desert returns to what haunts him, notably his own variegated identity. “My identity is there: it’s a nomadic identity. You have to move to learn. I don’t travel to write what I write, but I write so that I can travel. » He also questions the usefulness of literature, which “has not prevented what is corroding human history but undoubtedly remains in his eyes the best meeting point for the men and women of the continent African and all over the world.
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