I consider myself a pretty well-read individual, but I'll admit it:  I've never heard of Jean-Marie Gustave le Clezio.  But congrats to him (and there goes the pen name I was planning on using.)

I have of course heard of last year's winner, though.  In fact, I met Doris Lessing once at the HarperCollins Summer Party.  She was lovely and tiny and a wee bit hobbit-like and I was so afraid of saying something stupid, I didn't say anything at all.

Later (and this is true) I was talking to some other people I'd just met and they were asking me how I was enjoying my very first publishing party (which it was).  I, nervous and braying (as I often get when I'm nervous), said, "Well, I met Doris Lessing."  They said, "How as that?".  I then decided, in a moment of idiotic madness, to make the following, ahem, joke:  "She hit on me.  It was awkward for everyone."

After the unsurprising stony silence this received, I then brayed, "So, what do you do?"  And they answered, with impeccable timing, "We're Doris Lessing's agents."

A tumbleweed then rolled through the middle of us.  I cringe even thinking of it.