Literature prize to Chinese author Mo Yan

Helena Löthman teaches Chinese at the Department of Linguistics and Philology at Uppsala University. She was happily surprised by the announcement from the Swedish Academy.

‘It wasn’t very long since last time a Chinese author got the literature prize. It was year 2000 that Gao Xingjian got the literature prize, so now China has two Nobel Prize winners in literature.’

Mo Yan is a pseudonym for Guan Moye. The author was born in 1955 and grew up in Gaomi in the Shandong province in north-eastern China. His parents were farmers and he only went to school for five years. In 1976 he joined the People’s Liberation Army and it was during his time there that he started studying literature and writing his own stories. In his storytelling he relates to the experiences he had in his youth and to the environments in the province where he grew up.

His perhaps most famous novel is Red Sorghum, which takes place in Gaomi during a few turbulent decades of the 20th century. The book depicts the Japanese occupation and the tough conditions for the country’s poor farmers. In 1987 Red Sorghum became a successful film directed by Zhang Yimou.

‘It is a fantastic film and a fantastic book, one of few published by the Swedish publishing house Tranan. Mo Yan is well-known both in his native country and internationally, and has been translated to many languages, but has not quite reached the large masses in Sweden’, says Helena Löthman.

She says that the name Mo Yan means ‘don’t speak’ in Chinese, but it is unknown why the author chose this name.

‘I have thought a bit about that, is there something he isn’t telling? It is an exciting pseudonym.’

Mo Yan has been compared to authors such as William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Márquez and is considered to be one of the best contemporary authors in his home country.

Read more about the Nobel Prize in Literature.