STOCKHOLM, (Reuters) – Chinese writer Mo Yan won the 2012 Nobel prize for literature yesterday for works which combine “hallucinatory realism” with folk tales, history and contemporary life in China.
Mo, who was once so destitute he ate tree bark and weeds to survive, is the first Chinese national to win the $1.2 million literature prize, awarded by the Swedish Academy.
He said the award made him “overjoyed and terrified”.
Some of his books have been banned as “provocative and vulgar” by Chinese authorities but he has also been criticised as being too close to the Communist Party.
While users of a popular Chinese microblogging site offered their congratulations, dissident artist Ai Weiwei said he disagreed with giving the award to a writer with the “taint of government” about him.
Mo, 57, who grew up in the town of Gaomi in Shandong province in the northeast of the country and whose parents were farmers, sets his works mainly in the land of his birth.
Mo Yan is a pen name which means “Don’t Speak”. His real name is Guan Moye and he was forced to drop out of primary school and herd cattle during China’s Cultural Revolution.
Speaking to the state-run China News Service, Mo said he was happy to have won.
“But I do not think that my winning can be seen as representing anything. I think that China has many outstanding authors, and their great works should also be recognised by the world.
“Next, I’m going to put most of my efforts into creating my new works. I will keep working hard, and I thank everyone. As to whether I go to Sweden to receive the prize, I will wait for word from the organisers about arrangements.”
Peter Englund, head of the Swedish Academy, said Mo was “at home with his dad” when he was told of the award.
“He said he was overjoyed and terrified,” Englund told Swedish television. “He has such a damn unique way of writing. If you read half a page of Mo Yan you immediately recognise it as him.”
The award citation said Mo used a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives to create a world which was reminiscent of the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
At the same time, he found a “departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition”, the Academy said.
Englund said Mo offers “a unique insight into a unique world in a quite unique manner.”
His style is “a fountain of words and stories and stories within stories, then stories within the stories within the stories and so on. He’s mesmerising,” Englund told Reuters television.
Mo is best known in the West for “Red Sorghum”, which portrayed the hardships endured by farmers in the early years of communist rule and was made in a film directed by Zhang Yimou. His books also include “Big Breasts and Wide Hips” and “The Republic of Wine”.
“My works are Chinese literature, which is part of world literature. They show the life of Chinese people as well as the country’s unique culture and folk customs,” Mo told reporters in his hometown, Xinhua news agency reported. The last Chinese-born winner was Gao Xingjian in 2000, although he was living in France by that time and had taken French citizenship. His Nobel was not celebrated by the Chinese government.
Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily praised the win in a commentary on its website (www.people.com.cn).
“This is the first Chinese writer who has won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Chinese writers have waited too long, the Chinese people have waited too long,” it wrote.
