MCLC: Mo Yan wins Nobel lit prize

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Thu Oct 11 08:44:49 EDT 2012


MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Mo Yan wins Nobel lit prize
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Source: NYT (10/11/12):
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/12/books/nobel-literature-prize.html

Mo Yan Wins Nobel Literature Prize
By ALAN COWELL 

PARIS — The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday that it had awarded the
2012 Nobel Prize in Literature
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/> to Mo Yan, a Chinese
author whose work has been partially banned but who is not seen as a
dissident.

“Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social
perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of
those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at
the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in
oral tradition,” the citation for the award declared, striking what seemed
a careful balance after campaigns of vilification against other Chinese
Nobel laureates.

While his American audience has been limited, a film based on his novel
“Red Sorghum” and directed by Zhang Yimou, was one of the most
internationally acclaimed Chinese films, seen by millions.

In addition to novels, Mo Yan has published short stories, essays on
various topics, and “despite his social criticism is seen in his homeland
as one of the foremost contemporary authors,” the citation said.
Mr. Mo was born in 1955 in Gaomi, China. The citation described him as a
writer “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the
contemporary.”

The name Mo Yan is a pseudonym for Guan Moye. He is the son of farmers who
left school during the Cultural Revolution to work, first in agriculture
and later in a factory, according to his Nobel biography.

In 1976 he joined the People’s Liberation Army and began to study
literature and write. His first short story was published in a literary
journal in 1981, the biography on the Nobel Web site said.

“In his writing Mo Yan draws on his youthful experiences and on settings
in the province of his birth,” the biography said, referring to his 1987
novel published in English as “Red Sorghum” in 1993.

His novel “The Garlic Ballads,” as it was called on its publication in
English in 1995, and other works “have been judged subversive because of
their sharp criticism of contemporary Chinese society.”

Other works include “Big Breasts and Wide Hips” (1996), “Life and Death
are Wearing Me Out” (2006) and “Sandalwood Death,” to be published in
English in 2013. His most recent published work, called “Wa” in Chinese
(2009) “illuminates the consequences of China’s imposition of a
single-child policy.”

 Mr. Mo was one of three writers tipped by bookmakers to break what
critics had seen as a preponderance of European winners over the past
decade.

The prize is worth 8 million Swedish kronor, about $1.2 million.

Since 1901, 104 Nobel literature prizes have been awarded, the most recent
to Tomas Transtromer, a Swedish poet, whose more than 15 collections of
poetry, the academy said last year, offered “condensed, translucent
images” through which “he gives us fresh access to reality.”

The Japanese author Haruki Murakami had been tipped by bookmakers as the
most likely winner, but the panel selecting the winner prides itself on
its inscrutability, keeping its deliberations secret for 50 years.

The last American writer to win a Nobel in literature was Toni Morrison in
1993. Philip Roth has been a perennial favorite but has not been selected.

Nobel committees have announced prizes so far this week in physics,
chemistry and medicine. The 2012 Nobel Peace laureate is to be named on
Friday by the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and the prize in economics is to
be announced on Monday by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.




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