Le Clézio is the recipient of last year’s Nobel Prize for Literature and his books have now become more readily available in English translation. He was born in Nice in 1940 to Mauritian parents, spending much of his childhood in Mauritius and in Nigeria, where his father served as a surgeon in the British Army.

The Book of Flights, his third novel, was first published in France in 1965. He has won many awards in his home country; he is well travelled and a prolific writer of travel books and children’s books as well short stories. What strikes you first on approaching The Book of Flights is that it is not your typical narrative, but a series of descriptive insights into a wondering mind, a stream of consciousness. When you read it, you enter into a dream-like state. The closest I could imagine would be reading a favourite psalm or poet. We are taken on this journey – at one point Hogan (Le Clézio) questions whether he is going too fast. No, or perhaps so … this is a ‘book of flights’.