2012 Nobel Prize in Literature

Mo Yan ( means "Don't speak" ) has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm today.

Born Guan Moye in 1955 to a farming family in eastern Shandong province, Mo chose his penname 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.

As a 12-year-old during the Cultural Revolution he left school to work, first in agriculture, later in a factory. In 1976 he joined the People's Liberation Army and during this time began to study literature and write. His first short story was published in a literary journal in 1981.

With hallucinatory realism Mo merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.

In his writing, Mo Yan draws on his youthful experiences and on settings in the province of his birth. This is apparent in his novel Hong gaoliang jiazu (1987, in English Red Sorghum 1993).

Mo is best known in the West for "Red Sorghum", which portrayed the hardships endured by farmers in the early years of communist rule. His titles also include "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" , "The Republic of Wine" , "The Garlic Ballads" . Mo has written 11 novels and many short stories and essays on various topics.

Red Sorghum was successfully filmed in 1987, directed by famous Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world in its complexity,at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.

Despite his social criticism, he is seen in his homeland as one of the foremost contemporary authors.

If you want to start off to get a sense of how he is writing and also get a sense of the moral core in what he is writing I would recommend "The Garlic Ballads".