J. M. G. Le Clézio Clézio used his Nobel prize acceptance lecture to attack the subject of information poverty. The title of his lecture was "Dans la forêt des paradoxes" ("In the forest of paradoxes"), a title he attributed to Stig Dagerman. Gao Xingjian, a Chinese émigré, was the previous French citizen to receive the prize (for 2000); Le Clézio was the first French-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature since Claude Simon for 1985, and the fourteenth since Sully Prudhomme, laureate of the first prize of 1901. He is a staunch defender of Mama Rosa, director of a Mexican shelter raided by
What Was Lost Was Lost" was the winner in the first novel category of the Costa Book Awards. O'Flynn received a £5,000 prize. It was short-listed for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award. The Costa Book Awards' judging panel, chaired by Joanna Trollope, praised the novel for "blending humour and pathos in a cleverly constructed and absorbing mystery." They described the novel as inventive, compelling, and poignant. "What Was Lost" was long-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. It was short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. It won the Jelf Group First Novel Award