Mo Yan: A Nobel Laureate in Literature
Mo Yan (1955—), Chinese novelist and short-story writer renowned for his imaginative and humanistic fiction, which became popular in the 1980s. Mo was awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature.
Mo Yan was born to a farming family in Shandong Province. After only a few years of schooling, he began to work as a cattle herder at the age of 11. As a young man, Mo Yan enlisted in the army, where his literary talent was first discovered. He published his first novel in 1981 and went on to achieve his international breakthrough with the novel Red Sorghum, which was later adapted into a film. His narrative style bears the hallmarks of magical realism. Mo Yan’s writing often uses older Chinese literature and popular oral traditions as a starting point, combining these with contemporary social issues.
Mo Yan’s works are predominantly social commentary, and he is strongly influenced by the social realism of Lu Xun and the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez.
Mo Yan’s works are epic historical novels characterized by hallucinatory realism and containing elements of black humor. A major theme in Mo Yan’s works is the constancy of human greed and corruption. Using dazzling, complex, and often graphically violent images, he sets many of his stories near his hometown, Northeast Gaomi Township in Shandong province.
Published in 1986, Red Sorghum is a magical realism novel written by Mo Yan. Set in China from the 1920s to the 1970s, the novel plays with time, non- chronologically telling the story of three generations of the Shandong family as the transition from sorghum wine makers to resistance soldiers during the Anti-Japanese War. It was adapted into an Oscar nominated film in 1987.
The Global Spread of Chinese Literature
Chinese literature is nowadays getting better recognized throughout the world, and exerts strong influence on the image of China. In the past few years, more than 80 books by over 70 contemporary writers have been translated and published overseas.
Dissemination of contemporary literature overseas depends on translation as well as the study and interpretation of books. Therefore, if the effect is to truly realize cross-cultural communication, translation has to be integrated with commentary. Interpretation aids understanding, including content on China’s spiritual outlook, characteristics of the era, and its contribution and value to world literature. Jia Pingwa, a popular Chinese writer, once said: “Every writer wants his work to be acknowledged, so that readers of different languages can read it.”
Nowadays, Chinese national image-shaping is highly valued. Many people form their impression of a country by reading its literature; inversely the country also creates and disseminates its image through literary creation. Literature and the arts, as special tools, effectively narrow the distance between people of different cultures, languages, beliefs, and colors.
The Success of Liu Cixin in the International Science - Fiction Realm
Liu Cixin
Liu Cixin (1963—) is a Chinese science fiction writer. His sci-fi epic, The Three- Body Problem was translated into English, winning the Hugo Award for Best Novel, known as the sci-fi Nobel Prize.
Liu thus became the first author from Asia to win Best Novel. With the award, The Three Body Problem is widely believed to have joined the ranks of world science fiction classics. The German translation followed in 2016. The third volume of the Remembrance of Earth’s Past series, Death’s End, was also translated into English in 2016, which was a 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novel finalist and won a 2017 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Liu is also a nine-time winner of the Galaxy Award, and the 2017 Locus Award (for Death’s End) as well as a nominee for the Nebula Award.
The cinematic adaptation of Liu’s novella The Wandering Earth was released in China on February 5, 2019, which became the second highest grossing film in the Chinese box office within 2 weeks.
