SOAS congratulates Mo Yan – winner of the 2012 Nobel Literature Prize
Mo Yan 莫言
11 October 2012
SOAS, University of London, would like to congratulate Chinese author Mo Yan, who today <11 Oct> won the Nobel Literature Prize. Mo Yan spoke at SOAS in April this year, and is well known by the SOAS Centre of Chinese Studies.
Speaking about the author, SOAS Professor of Chinese, Michel Hockx, who knows Mo Yan and his work well, said:
"Mo Yan is a marvellous storyteller. His novels have a unique way of combining the grand narrative of modern Chinese history with the local colour of Chinese rural communities. Akin to writers such as Garcia Marquez, Mo Yan permeates his writing about remote communities with a magical atmosphere, without shying away from the harsh and sometimes violent realities that he has witnessed. He expertly handles the use of local language and dialect, and as his career progressed he became increasingly experimental with his narration, to the extent that he once even made himself a character in one of his novels. All his novels create unique individual realities, quite different from the political stories that were told about the countryside in the Maoist years, when Mo Yan grew up.
“For the past two decades, Mo Yan's novels have been translated into English by Howard Goldblatt and have been remarkably popular with English-language audiences. He is probably the most-translated living Chinese novelist. He has a very substantial oeuvre, worthy of that of a Nobel Prize winner."
For more information about Chinese Studies at SOAS: www.soas.ac.uk/chinesestudies/
