JEAN-MARIE Gustave Le Clezio, winner of 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, signed more than 1,200 books in one hour at the Shanghai Book Fair.

Le Clezio also spoke about "The Author in the City" and discussed Western and Chinese views of literature with Bi Feiyu, last year's winner of the Man Asia Booker Prize.

During the short visit to the Shanghai Book Fair, the 71-year-old Nice native impressed Chinese readers and media with his philosophy, vivid articulation, and thoughtful references to French, English and Chinese literature.

His reading recommendations for young Chinese are the classic Chinese novel "Dream of the Red Chamber" from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), Tang Dynasty poetry by Du Fu (712-770), and works of Shakespeare (1564-1616).

Le Clezio also praised the works of Chinese novelist and dramatist Shu Qingchun (pen name Lao She), and frequently referred to his works. Le Clezio wrote prefaces for Lao She's works in France.

"He accurately catches and illustrates the spirit of the brand-new China with a modern writing style. I am captivated by the city of Beijing in his books. It is a city enduring endless wars and pillage, and nevertheless its people struggling valiantly and survive," he said.

Le Clezio also turned heads with his fashion style - running shoes, black shirt and slacks. He also convinced Bi to wear a colorful T-shirt to a panel discussion, rather than change to a more formal white shirt, saying, "He looks great in a T-shirt, like an athlete."

"I always wanted to be good at sports but since my childhood in Nice, I was never good at any games. No one asked me to play games with them, though I was always lonely and waiting in my room," he said.

"So I stayed in the room and kept writing stories, and the stories later made me popular among friends and classmates."

Le Clezio traveled from Nice to Nigeria at seven, to visit his father, who served there as a surgeon for the British army, and then lived there. Since then, the author has crossed continents, living in both cities and rural areas, always in touch with what was authentic. From 1970 to 1974, he lived with the Embera-Wounaan Indians in Panama, gaining access to their myths.

He dedicated his 2008 Nobel lecture to one of their storytellers, Elvira, and to a host of modern writers who have gone beneath the urban patina.

He said of her:

"She was poetry in action, ancient theater, and the most contemporary of novels all at the same time. She was all those things with fire, with violence, she invented, in the blackness of the forest, amidst the surrounding chorus of insects and toads and the whirlwind of bats, a sensation which cannot be called anything other than beauty."

Le Clezio also lived in Africa and Mexico and visited South Pacific Islands.

The natural world figures prominently in his works and there is a twining of humanity with nature.

Le Clezio divides his time between Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he has taught literature for many years, Mauritius, and Nice.

Because of his extensive spiritual and literary travels, Le Clezio is often considered a global writer, known for his great efforts in re-discovering and revealing lost cultures, and capturing the soul of less-visited areas and their inhabitants. The urban-rural divide between "civilization" and the "non-civilized" world is an over-arching theme. The Swedish Academy called him "a conjurer who tried to lift words above the degenerate state of everyday speech and to restore to them the power to invoke an essential reality."

He has written 40 works, (novellas, novels, short stories, essays and children's books), and 12 of them have been translated and published in China, including "Wandering Star," "Heartburn," "Ourania," and "Desert." Another four works, including the autobiographical essay "African Man," recalling his youth in Africa, will be published by end of this year. His publisher is the People's Literature Publishing House.

Chinese readers mostly sought his autograph for "Desert," considered by some a breakthrough novel, about a Saharan nomad girl who struggles to adapt in Marseilles; "Wandering Star," about a Palestinian girl and an Israeli girl on two sides of a fence when Israel was formed, and "Ourania" about a near-utopian society that cannot survive.

Surprised by his popularity in China, Le Clezio talked with Shanghai Daily about his wide travels, especially to less-visited places, his entry to literature through Shakespeare, his complicated relationship with his father, his affection for China and surprising knowledge of Chinese literature.

This was his first visit to Shanghai, but his fourth to China.

Le Clezio tried to visit China in 1967 but was denied a visa during the turbulent "cultural revolution" (1966-76). A few years later, he visited Hong Kong and then Guangzhou.

In 1993, he visited Nanjing to meet Xu Jun, who translated his novel "Desert" (1980), which was published in China in 1983.

In 2008, he visited Beijing to receive the annual award for one of the best foreign novels in the 21st century, "Ourania," about a near-utopian society. The award was given by the prestigious People's Literature Publishing House, his publisher.

In "Ourania," (the name of one of the nine Greek muses) Le Clezio, who lived in Mexico for 12 years, creates a near-utopian society in a small town in Mexico. In this utopia, all residents, wanderers from all over the world, enjoy the one and only social class, with no social gaps. Children don't attend formal schools, which might suppress their nature, but they learn from nature.

Inevitably, this utopia crashes as the inhabitants are dispersed during an organized attack from other societies.

The parable-like story continues with the recurring theme of the tension between urban and nomadic societies in Le Clezio's works.

While he was born in Nice, his father was born in Mauritius; a paternal ancestor had fled France in 1798 near the end of the French Revolution.

Since he was very young, Le Clezio has traveled across continents, crossing all kinds of borders, from urbanized France and America to forests and deserts of North Africa and Panama where the inhabitants are nomads or indigenous tribes.

In awarding him the Nobel Prize, the Swedish Academy acclaimed him as "an author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, an explorer of humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization."

"I have lived in nomadic society a few times. Because of their environment, nomadic people are really friendly, passionate and kind-hearted, even if you are a stranger," he said.

"Unfortunately, these good qualities are getting lost in cities, where people are becoming increasingly more indifferent to each other."

He is nostalgic about his freer years when he lived with indigenous people and has written partially autobiographical books such as "Onitsha" in 1991 and "African Man" in 2004 to recount stories from those days. He also describes untouched tribes in many of his novels, such as "Desert" (1980), considered of his breakthrough novel. The book won Le Clezio the grand prize from the French Academy.

In "Desert," he tells the story of young nomad woman Lalla from a Sahara Desert tribe. The novel follows her journey to Marseilles to become a photo model and describes how she struggles to conform to urban civilization, but finally returns to Africa.

"I was born in the city and destined to live in the city, but my years in the forest have offered me a different living style that is wild and adventurous," he said.

"But I also really like writing in cities, because they are dynamic worlds, and we authors can find our imagination and ideas surging increasingly through the busy streets and subways. The complicated structure of cities helps authors to discover sophisticated human relationships."

Le Clezio has finally returned to the city, and now mainly lives and writes in Albuquerque, an American city in the southwest desert state of New Mexico. The state is known for spectacular desert and indigenous people. But Le Clezio calls his home "a village in the city," which is also his concept of an ideal city.

"The ideal city should be set up on the basis of the countryside, so that it carries the complexity of a city while its inhabitants won't lose their good qualities," he told Shanghai Daily.

He acknowledged such cities do not exist in real life, or even in novels, such as "Ourania" where a near-utopia collapses. He calls the ideal future city "a multicultural melting pot with no conflict or war."

"No culture is superior to others, and cultures need dialogues for acceptance and understanding of diversity, which should be a characteristic of the future city," he explained.

The author cited Mexico city, where he lived for 12 years, as an example.

"Wall painting is seen commonly in the city, almost everywhere. Public art plays a major role, and art belongs to the public, rather than a handful of elites dominating the culture. The future city certainly requires massive participation from the public," he said.

Le Clezio emphasized that books are one of the essentials for future cities. Books are easy to keep and transport and they help people to gain knowledge and inspiration.

Books also played a major role in his life since childhood, drawing him to literature and helping him connect with his father.

Due to the Mauritius connection from his father's side, Le Clezio visits Mauritius frequently and calls it "my little fatherland."

He had never met his father, a surgeon working in Nigeria, before the age of seven. At that time, he took a boat with his mother and brother to Africa, and wrote his first novel on the ship, titled "A Very Long Trip."

"It was a very complicated relationship between me and my father," he recalled. "And of course, I tried my best to please him, especially because I never met him before."

His father required him to learn English, and to write in English if he wished to become a writer. To obey his father and get closer to him, the 14-year-old teenager, who would become one of the most notable French writers, bought the complete works of Shakespeare and read all of it.

"I began reading Shakespeare and English literature, which is an entry to explore the world of literature," he recalled.

"And it was also from Shakespeare ("Hamlet") I picked my motto - 'To thine own self be true,' be true to yourself."

To be true to himself, Le Clezio began shutting himself in a room and writing stories. He called writing "boring and mysterious," but he has found passion from such "boring" practices. His first works were experimental.

"If we authors are ever different from other people, it may be the voice inside of us, the desire to have dialogue with others, especially with those who don't write, which will gradually turn into a passion," he said.

Such passion also lies in the desire "to voice out for those who don't have their own voices due to their economic, political and social status."

"Words can be more powerful than rocks, in confronting violence. Authors play a vital role in defending human rights," he said.

"Literature does not solve issues, such as war, injustice or economic depression. But literature makes vital warnings, and connects human beings with nature."

In "Raga: The Invisible Land," Le Clecio records his trips in the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, particularly the islands of Port Vila, Ambyrm and Espiritu Santo, where history, he said, has been concealed and disguised as in many former colonial areas.

It is called the "invisible continent," because the first visitors didn't recognize it as a cultural and geographic unit, while those who came afterward only viewed it as another land to conquer.

Le Clezio managed to pick up the ancient memories and legends on these invisible areas, and told the native people's stories of the beautiful land.

(Li Qian contributed to this article.)