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Biography of Mo Yan

Mo Yan is a contemporary Chinese writer, known for his novels and short stories. In 2012, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born Guan Moye in 1955, in the town of Gaomi in Shandong province, China, he adopted the pen name Mo Yan, which can be translated from Chinese as "don't speak" or "be silent".

During the Cultural Revolution, Guan left school and joined the Chinese army in 1976, serving as a platoon commander, political instructor, and security officer. Even while in the army in the early 1980s, Mo Yan began publishing his works. In 1984, he was transferred to the Department of Literature in the Army's Cultural Academy, and in 1991, he obtained a doctorate degree from Beijing Normal University.

Mo Yan's first published work was the novel "Falling Rain on a Spring Night" in 1981. Many of his books have been translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, a professor of East Asian languages and literature at the University of Notre Dame. However, as of the time of his Nobel Prize award, his works had not yet been translated into Russian.

Mo Yan is known for his realistic style of writing, which captivates readers with its authenticity. He explores a wide range of themes in his works, from simple peasant stories to the issue of population growth in China. Overall, Mo Yan has authored around ten novels.

Mo Yan is one of the most renowned and deserving writers in contemporary China, with his works receiving numerous awards, including the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in 2009 and the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2010. In 2012, he was honored with the Nobel Prize in Literature.

While Mo Yan is a prominent figure in his homeland, his works have faced criticism for their literary language liberties and candid portrayal of reality. Nevertheless, he firmly stands by his ideals, which he openly expresses. In 2009, during the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Mo Yan stated that literature has the power to break down barriers between countries and peoples. He believes that Chinese people should read more foreign authors.

The Nobel Prize in 2012 was a great honor for the whole country, as Mo Yan became the first mainland Chinese resident to receive the award, as previous laureates were usually Chinese living in other countries. When literature enthusiasts worldwide flocked to bookstores to purchase the latest book by the new Nobel laureate, Russian readers will have to wait a little longer for the translations to be rushed and published, as they should have been translated and published yesterday.

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MO Yan／ Grand Prize 2006

Grand Prize 2006 [17th]

--> Writer Born Fabruary 17, 1955 （aged51）

Mr. Mo Yan is one of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese literature. His works depict the reality of life in China’s cities and farming villages with a unique blend of realism and fantasy, blazing a trail into the future for Asian literature. He is the standard bearer not only for Chinese literature today, but also the literature of Asia and the world.

The details of title, age, career and award citation are at the time of announcement of the Prize.

Award Citation

Mr. Mo Yan is one of the leading figures in contemporary Chinese literature. His works depict the reality of life in China's cities and farming villages with a unique blend of realism and fantasy, and have been translated into many languages, blazing a trail into the future for Asian literature. He is the standard bearer not only for Chinese literature today, but also the literature of Asia and the world. Mr. Mo Yan was born in 1955 to a family of farmers in Gaomi, Shandong Province, China. He left primary school due to the Cultural Revolution. After working as a cow herder, farmhand, and a temporary laborer in factories, Mr. Mo Yan joined the People's Liberation Army. He began his writing career in the 1980s. The themes that he has continuously depicted were discovered within himself. They focus on China's poverty-stricken farming villages and the people who live there. The author continues to create a unique literary world by blending narrative expression from the traditional Chinese literary arts with the avant-garde methods derived from modern Western literature. Mr. Mo Yan published Hong Gaoliang Jiazu (Red Sorghum: A Novel of China) in 1987. Set in an agricultural village during the war against Japan, the novel was turned into a movie by director Zhang Yimou that won the Golden Bear for Best Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. This literary work, firmly rooted in the vast spaces of China, garnered international attention. His work continued with the publication of Jiuguo(The Republic of Wine) and other novels. He was catapulted into the vanguard of contemporary Chinese literature, while gaining international recognition as a novelist after many of his works were translated into English, Korean, Spanish, German, Japanese, French, Vietnamese, and other languages. The author insists that his work is not an imitation of Western novels, but the creation of novels that incorporate the reality of today's China. He declared, "It is meaningless to follow others. If everyone heads West, then I will head East." He is not merely guiding Chinese literature, but demonstrating the spirit to drive into the future the literature of Asia that has been bound by the stifling influence of modern Western literature and the weight of history and tradition. His works represent the successful creation of a literary universe by alternating scenes of his hometown of Gaomi, a remote agricultural area, with the literary space of fantasy. Though they depict people and a place deeply rooted in the soil and culture of China, readers throughout the world can readily identify with them. This makes Mr. Mo Yan's novels international literature in the true sense of the world. A son of the vastness of China, Mr. Mo Yan has used literature to employ the richness and diversity of culture and the complexity and potential of human society. He has opened a path from Asia to the world, in the process demonstrating the significance of Asian culture to the world. He is indeed worthy of the Grand Prize of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prizes.

Biography of MO Yan (PDF)（PDF, 496.7KB）

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Mo Yan's 'Hallucinatory Realism' Wins Lit Nobel

NPR Staff and Wires

Chinese writer Mo Yan is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature. Mo Yan is a pen name that means "don't speak" — a name he adopted because his parents, who raised him during the Cultural Revolution, warned him to hold his tongue. STR/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Chinese writer Mo Yan is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature. Mo Yan is a pen name that means "don't speak" — a name he adopted because his parents, who raised him during the Cultural Revolution, warned him to hold his tongue.

Chinese Author Wins 2012 Nobel Prize In Literature

Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday. The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the award, praised Mo's "hallucinatory realism," saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." The award is a cause of pride for a government that disowned the only previous Chinese winner of the award, an exiled critic.

Peter Englund, the academy's permanent secretary, said the academy contacted Mo, 57, before the announcement. "He said he was overjoyed and scared," Englund said.

Among the works highlighted by the Nobel judges were Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads and Big Breasts & Wide Hips . As NPR's Lynn Neary reports on Morning Edition, "He's said to be so prolific that he wrote Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out — which is a 500,000-word epic — in just 43 days. He wrote it with a brush — not a computer — because he says a computer would have slowed him down because he can't control himself when he's online; he always has to search up more information."

Chinese social media exploded with pride after the announcement. Mo's publisher called it a dream come true but said Mo always played down the importance of prizes. The reception of the award in China is a sharp contrast to the reactions when jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, infuriating the Chinese leadership. The communist leadership also disowned the Nobel when Gao Xingjian won the literature award in 2000 for his absurdist dramas and inventive fiction. Gao's works are laced with criticisms of China's communist government and have been banned in China.

Red Sorghum

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Words From A Man Named 'Don't Speak'

Born Guan Moye in 1955 to a farming family in eastern Shandong province, Mo chose his pen name while writing his first novel. Garrulous by nature, Mo has said the name, meaning "don't speak," was intended to remind him to hold his tongue lest he get himself into trouble and to mask his identity since he began writing while serving in the army. Mo has said he finds it ironic that now he's speaking all the time, Neary says.

"His work is mostly about peasant life, set in the countryside," Neary says. "He often writes about the area where he grew up. ... He has said that folk literature, storytellers, his own family's stories have been a resource for him."

His breakthrough came with the novel Red Sorghum , published in 1987. Set in a small village, like much of his fiction, Red Sorghum is an earthy tale of love and peasant struggles set against the backdrop of the anti-Japanese war. It was turned into a film that won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988, marked the directing debut of Zhang Yimou and boosted Mo's popularity.

Mo writes of visceral pleasures and existential quandaries, and tends to create vivid, mouthy characters. While his early work stuck to a straightforward narrative structure enlivened by vivid descriptions and raunchy humor, Mo has lately become more experimental, toying with different narrators and embracing a freewheeling style often described as "Chinese magical realism."

"His writing appeals to all your senses," Englund said.

Mo was a somewhat unexpected choice for the Nobel jury, which has been criticized for being too Eurocentric. European authors had won four of the past five awards, with last year's prize going to Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer. As with the other Nobel Prizes, the prize is worth 8 million kronor, or about $1.2 million.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.