Mo Yan(1955 — ?)
Mo Yan
République populaire de Chine
6 min read
Mo Yan, the pen name of Guan Moye, is a Chinese novelist and short story writer born in 1955 in Shandong. A major figure in contemporary Chinese literature, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012 for a body of work blending magic realism, folk tales, and the history of rural China.
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1955 in Gaomi, in Shandong Province (China)
- Published “Red Sorghum” in 1986, adapted for the screen by Zhang Yimou (Golden Bear 1988)
- Author of major novels such as “Big Breasts and Wide Hips” (1996) and “Frog” (2009)
- Received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012, the first writer of Chinese nationality residing in China to win it
- His work is praised for having merged “folk tales, history and the contemporary” (Nobel Committee, 2012)
Works & Achievements
An epic spanning three generations of a peasant family confronting the Japanese invasion; the novel that brought **Mo Yan** to fame and inspired a film that won an award in Berlin.
A film by **Zhang Yimou** based on the novel, winner of the Golden Bear in Berlin in **1988**, which made **Mo Yan** known abroad.
A sweeping novel that follows a mother and her children across the whole of twentieth-century China, from the wars to political upheavals.
A historical novel about the Boxer Rebellion, blending cruelty, folk opera, and resistance to foreign powers.
A teeming tale in which an executed landlord is reincarnated as various animals to observe half a century of rural Chinese history.
A novel about a midwife caught up in the one-child policy; it won the **Mao Dun** Prize in **2011**.
Anecdotes
The name "Mo Yan" is a pen name that means "don't speak" in Chinese. The writer chose it in memory of his parents' warnings: under the Cultural Revolution, it was better to hold one's tongue, because a careless word could bring serious trouble. So it is a man who "does not speak" who became one of China's greatest storytellers.
Around the age of eleven, during the Cultural Revolution, the young Guan Moye had to leave school and herd the family's cattle in the countryside of Shandong. Alone for entire days in the fields, he watched nature and listened to the villagers' tales: those long hours of solitude and those folk stories would later nourish his whole body of work.
His novel "Red Sorghum Clan" was adapted for the screen in 1987 by the director Zhang Yimou. The film "Red Sorghum" won the Golden Bear at the Berlin festival in 1988 and made Mo Yan known far beyond China, launching the director's international career at the same time.
Mo Yan invented an imaginary territory, "Northeast Gaomi Township," inspired by his native region, where many of his stories take place. He said he drew on the American William Faulkner, who had created a fictional county for his novels, and on the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez and his magical realism.
In 2012, Mo Yan received the Nobel Prize in Literature. In his Stockholm lecture, titled "Storytellers," he spoke above all of memories of his mother, a poor peasant woman, and declared that he was, at heart, simply "a man who tells stories."
Primary Sources
To Mo Yan, who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary.
I am a person who tells stories. It is because of storytelling that I was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
The narrative opens with the narrator's family memory, evoking his father as a child joining the fighters against the Japanese invaders, in the red sorghum fields of Gaomi township.
Key Places
Rural region in eastern China where Mo Yan was born in 1955. It inspired the “Northeast Gaomi Township,” the imaginary setting of most of his novels.
Capital of China where Mo Yan pursued his military career, studied writing, and became a leading figure in the China Writers Association.
Capital of Sweden where Mo Yan received the Nobel Prize in Literature in December 2012 and delivered his lecture “Storytellers.”