Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize for Literature

11.10.12 | Benedicte Page - The Bookseller

Chinese author Mo Yan has been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature for work which "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."
Mo Yan's novel Red Sorghum, a story of family and myth spanning three generations, is published by Arrow; Constable & Robinson publishes Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, the story of a Chinese landlord executed in 1949 who asks the gods in hell to allow him to return to his village to sort things out. Novels Big Breasts, Wide Hips and Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh are published by Methuen.
Novel Pow!, described as the tale of an old monk listening to a prospective novice's tale of depravity and violence, and as a "bizarre romp through the Chinese countryside", will be published in January by the University of Chicago Press.

Mo Yan (a pseudonymn for Guan Moye) was born in 1955 and grew up in Shandong province in north-eastern China, the son of farmers. As a 12-year-old during the Cultural Revolution he left school to work in agriculture and then a factory. Mo Yan's writing draws on his youthful experiences and on settings in the province of his birth. The Nobel Prize said: "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."

Jonathan Ruppin of Foyle's said there would now be "a sustained interest" in Mo Yan's work. "There's been interest in Chinese literature in the last few years and people will be curious. He's clearly a very visionary and individual writer," he said. Novels not currently available from UK publishers would be sourced from the US, Ruppin added.

Report in The Guardian

And at Salon

And from PublishersLunch:

The Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded Thursday morning to Chinese writer Mo Yan, with the citation praising him for his "hallucinatory realism" that "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." Mo, a pseudonym for Guan Moye, is one of China's best-selling (and most pirated) authors in the country, and his work, according to the Swedish Academy, "created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition." Mo was said to be "overjoyed and terrified" to win the prize.

Like many Nobel winners, Mo is published by a number of houses, largely small presses, though RED SORGHUM was released by Penguin in 1994 and by Cornerstone in the UK this past July (with the digital edition published today.) Other works include BIG BREASTS AND WIDE HIPS, THE GARLIC BALLADS, and LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT, originally published in the US by Arcade and reissued by Skyhorse. Arcade co-founder Jeannette Seaver said in a statement: "Dick Seaver was Mo Yan’s champion from the beginning and admired this exceptional writer’s unique and original voice. He was constantly reading passages to me, and was proud to be Mo Yan’s American publisher. Mo Yan’s trajectory has been one of courage and persistence in confronting so many difficulties, and this Nobel is also testimony to this man’s extraordinary courage. My only regret is that my husband, Dick, is not witnessing this wonderful award to both the author and the outstanding translator, Howard Goldblatt."

In addition, Seagull Press will publish his work POW next year, while the University of Oklahoma Press will bring out his novel SANDALWOOD DEATH. Mo's longtime translator Howard Goldblatt told China Daily earlier this week that "if Mo's name is announced on Thursday, I imagine I'll have an opportunity to translate some earlier works I've not had time for." Mo's agent Andrew Wylie tells us he is "in discussions with publishers in all territories" with respect to the author's back catalog and untranslated work, while Penguin is going back to press on an initial 15,000 copies for RED SORGHUM.
Nobel Prize citation