Nobel glory for Mo Yan

“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,” the award citation says. At the same time he finds “a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition”.

Mo, whose real name is Guan Moye, is the first Chinese writer to win the honour, which comes with eight million Swedish krona (Bt37 million).

“I grew up in an environment immersed with folk culture, which inevitably comes into my novels when I pick up a pen to write,” Mo told reporters in his hometown of Gaomi, Shandong, on Thursday. “This has definitely affected, even decided, my work’s artistic style.”

“Mo Yan deserves the prize simply for being a great writer,” said Eric Abrahamsen, founder of Paper Republic, an English-language website on Chinese literature. “He has done much to develop the language and style of contemporary Chinese literature, and he has also tackled many of the ‘big’ historical and social themes of contemporary China.”

The buzz in the Chinese media about Mo possibly winning the prize started about a month ago, when betting agencies started placing him as a contender. In early October British bookmakers Ladbrokes gave Mo odds of 8-to-1, next to Japanese writer Haruki Murakami at 3-to-1.

Although China boasts a tradition of literature and scholarship, few writers have won international acclaim, so the Nobel has always been an aspiration for Chinese writers. Mo’s win will shed light on more previously unknown Chinese works.

Although he has allowed few media interviews, Mo is well known.

In contrast with his appearance, his works are anything but “down home”. They are dramatic, with “a unique style, sharp language, wild imagination and magnificent narration”, says Ye Kai, a senior editor who has edited Mo’s work.

Mo has created many colourful characters, and once said that if there were a prototype, it would be the abandoned and ignored “black boy” who first appeared in the 1985 novella “Red Transparent Radish”, which might bear imprints of the author’s childhood.

Mo’s family has been categorised as rich middle-class peasants, which meant he was close to being labelled a “class enemy”. He dropped out of school and became a cowherd. At 20 he left his hometown and joined the army.

In another 1985 novella, “White Dong Swing”, Mo first wrote about Gaomi Northeast Township, generally believed to be based on his hometown in eastern Shandong province. In a short story published the same year, “Autumn Water”, he mentioned the landscape again.

Gaomi County is to Mo what yoknapatawpha County in Mississippi was to the American Nobel laureate Faulkner. It is where most of his stories are set, a land that has inspired him throughout his career.

More people heard of Mo when director Zhang Yimou adapted the film “Red sorghum” from his 1986 novella. Set in Gaomi, the story is the tale of a sedan carrier who saves the bride he is carrying from bandits and later marries her. The wild, audacious man urinates in the local winery’s barrels, but dies fighting Japanese troops during World War II.

Editor Ye Kai has high praise for this story, calling it an ode to the power of life.

Mo left the army in 1997 and gradually developed his writing style. History, family sagas, blood and violence are frequent elements in his works, such as “Big Breasts and Wide Hips” and “Sandalwood Penalty”.

Howard Goldblatt, who translated many of his works and is a scholar of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, finds Mo’s novels reminiscent of Charles Dickens’ writings – big, bold works with florid, image-driven, powerful writing and a strong moral core.

He also sees parallels with works like William Vollmann’s “Europe Central”, such as “Red Sorghum”, with its historical sweep, and “The Garlic Ballads”, with the trenchant criticism of monstrous behaviour by those in power.

In Mo’s works Goldblatt see influences of the modernist Faulkner, the magic-realist Garcia Marquez, Oe Kenzaburo and, last but not the least, Francois Rabelais, with his “bawdy humour and scatological exuberance”.

Not everyone is convinced Mo deserved to win. Critics have attacked him – on his perspective rather than his talent – and cast doubts that he could be objective and independent enough when discussing serious social issues in his work. They believe his Nobel Prize is in direct conflict with his position as vice chairman of the official Chinese Writers’ Association.

Ye Kai disagrees, quoting Mo’s 2010 novel “Frog” as an example. The plot tackles a sensitive issue: China’s family-planning policy. Mo’s protagonist, the Aunt, helped deliver thousands of babies in Gaomi in the years after the communists came to power, but in the 1970s and ’80s she became an abortionist, in line with the one-child policy. 

In her final years the midwife atones for her guilt by making thousands of clay babies, to which she recites Buddhist sutras.

“Some people think the book is an ode to the family-planning policy,” Ye wrote in his blog. “I don’t think they really understand it.”

In an earlier interview with China Daily, Mo said a writer’s conscience prevents him from avoiding issues. He said he hoped people would see that “of all things in the world, life is the most valuable”.

Goldblatt says another important work, “The Republic of Wine”, is the most technically innovative and sophisticated novel from China he’s ever read. In a novel full of his signature surrealism and rich metaphors, Mo traces an official who travels to the fictional Republic of Wine to investigate whether it’s true that people are eating babies. But local officials talk him into getting drunk and he drowns in a pit of excrement before he can begin his investigation.

The novel is widely considered a satire against both government corruption and the pedantry of Chinese drinking habits.

Paper Republic’s Abrahamsen most appreciates Mo’s poise – between literary and analytic aspirations.

“Chinese literature can often go to one extreme or the other,” Abrahamsen says. “Either it’s an exposition of a writer’s opinions about a social issue, sacrificing literary value, or else it’s a work that retreats from reality and plays games with imagination. I think Mo Yan has kept the balance.”