China's Mo Yan wins Nobel Literature Prize

• Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye and was born in 1955. He has published novels, short stories and essays on various topics.
• In his writing Mo Yan draws on his youthful experiences and on settings in the province of his birth.
• Chinese author Mo Yan said he was delighted at winning this year’s Nobel prize for literature on Thursday, which will inspire him to “strive harder” in his writing.

Chinese author Mo Yan has won the Nobel Literature Prize for writing that mixes folk tales, history and the contemporary, the Swedish Academy announced.

“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 Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition,” the Swedish Academy said.

Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye and was born in 1955, “with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary,” the jury said.

Mo Yan has published novels, short stories and essays on various topics, and despite his social criticism is seen in his homeland as one of the foremost contemporary authors, the Nobel committee noted.

In his writing Mo Yan draws on his youthful experiences and on settings in the province of his birth.

Chinese author Mo Yan said he was delighted at winning this year’s Nobel prize for literature on Thursday, which will inspire him to “strive harder” in his writing, state media reported.

“On hearing the news that I won the award, I was very happy,” Mo Yan was quoted as saying by the official China News Service.

“I will focus on creating new works. I will strive harder to thank everyone.”

The Swedish Academy which announced the award in Stockholm said Mo Yan, 57, one of China’s leading authors of recent decades, was recognised for works that “create a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez”.

The prize is a “happy thing” for China’s literary world, an official with the state-sanctioned Chinese Writer’s Association said.

Mo Yan has focused an unflinching eye on what he calls the darkness and ugliness of 20th-century Chinese society in a prolific writing career that on Thursday landed him the 2012 Nobel prize for literature.

Mo Yan, one of China’s leading writers of the past half-century, became the first Chinese national and just the second Chinese-language writer to be awarded the coveted prize.

The 57-year-old, whose real name is Guan Moye, is perhaps best-known abroad for his 1987 novella “Red Sorghum”, a tale of the brutal violence that plagued the eastern China countryside — where he grew up — during the 1920s and 30s.

The story was later made into an acclaimed film by leading Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

In a style that has been compared to the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mo Yan authored other acclaimed works including “Big Breasts and Wide Hips”, “Republic of Wine” and “Life and Death are Wearing Me Out”.