J.M.G. Le Clezio

Last night I read a story, "The Boy Who Had Never Seen the Sea," which I loved in a salted, dazzled, aching way. The boy walks much too far out into the desert of a low tide and then runs into a cave, just before the waves, running the same speed as the sea! He gets backed to the wall of the cave by the water and stares at the sea to stop it. It's about passion, this story, imagined from the school dormitory by the children who didn't run away to sea, and it is beautiful in a way that wrenches me.

It's a translation from French in the October 27 issue of The New Yorker. The author, J.M.G. Le Clezio, won this year's Nobel Prize. I hadn't been paying enough attention to remember that, and I've never read his work before. This story is so good.