每日英语：Chinese Writer Wins Literature Nobel

Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday, a move that could help offset a blow to China's image abroad two years after the Nobel Peace Prize went to a Chinese human-rights activist.

But the award is already proving to be controversial. The author, whose real name is Guan Moye, has been criticized by some Chinese artists and writers for being too close to Beijing amid debate over state control in the nation's cultural affairs.

Mo Yan, whose books are taught in Chinese-literature classes around the world, 'merges folk tales, history and the contemporary' with 'hallucinatory realism,' the Swedish Academy said in a statement on Thursday. He is the first Chinese citizen to win the literature prize. China-born Gao Xingjian, who won the prize in 2000, left in 1987 and won as a French citizen.

Mo Yan岸the pen name is Chinese for 'don't speak'岸couldn't be reached for comment, but he was quoted by the state-run Xinhua news agency Thursday night as saying that he was 'very surprised' at winning the award.

The award comes two years after the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo, a jailed Chinese dissident who was the lead author of a manifesto calling for free speech and free elections in China. The move dealt a blow to China's efforts to improve its image abroad and infuriated Beijing, which since then has had icy relations with Norway, where the independent committee that awards the Peace Prize is based. The other Nobel Prizes are all awarded by committees in Sweden.

China was also embarrassed in 1989 when the Peace Prize was awarded to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist religious leader who Beijing accuses of pushing for independence for the Himalayan region.

The move comes as China has moved to project its soft power, or influence in media and culture, to other nations to match its standing as the world's No. 2 economy. Critics say its efforts have been hindered by Beijing's tight control over books, movies and television.

Born to farmers in the eastern China province of Shandong in 1955, Mo Yan is among the most celebrated of the generation of Chinese writers to emerge in the years immediately following the Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s. He began writing after joining the People's Liberation Army in 1976 and first gained widespread fame for the 1987 novel 'Red Sorghum,' set in his hometown of Gaomi. The novel was later made into an award-winning film by Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

Many of his novels have been translated into English, including 'Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,' which was nominated for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007 and won the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature in 2009. His other works include 'Big Breasts and Wide Hips'岸which was banned briefly inside China岸as well as 'Sandalwood Death' and 'The Garlic Ballads: A Novel.'

'He has a ribald, rustic fictional voice that he convincingly associates with a rural background,' said Charles Laughlin, a professor of Chinese literature at the University of Virginia. 'But to this he applies an avant-garde fictional vision that gives most of his stories a mythic and absurd quality, revealing influences of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garc赤a M芍rquez.'

Celebrated in Chinese literary circles for his slyly subversive style early on in his career, Mo Yan has been criticized in recent years by some other writers and Chinese human-rights activists for failing to use his stature to push for greater freedom of expression in China. At the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2009, he joined other members of the official Chinese delegation in walking out of a seminar where exiled Chinese writers were preparing to speak, and later gave a speech seen by some as making excuses for Chinese censorship. He was also among many writers who participated in producing a hand-copied special edition of Mao Zedong's 1942 talks on art and literature at the Chinese revolutionary stronghold of Yanan岸writings that later formed the basis for the party's propaganda policies.

During his speech in Frankfurt, according to an account in the state-run China Daily newspaper, the writer recalled a story in which Beethoven, the composer, found himself walking down the street with the German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, when they encountered a gaggle of nobles. Goethe is said to have stepped aside and respectfully doffed his hat, while the brash Beethoven walked defiantly through them.

'When I was young, I thought what Beethoven did was great. But, with age, I realized it could be easier to do what Beethoven did, and it might take more courage to do what Goethe did,' China Daily quoted Mo Yan as saying.

That conciliatory stance has not sat well with the country's most defiant artists.

'For a contemporary writer to avoid the very clear issues of today's struggle is something that's not negotiable. I cannot separate literature from the people's struggle,' said dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei in an interview on Thursday.

'I cannot blame' the Nobel Prize committee, he added, 'but it's sending out a signal that only reflects bad taste.'

Mo Yan is vice chairman of the government-backed China Writers' Association, whose vice president He Jianming sounded a victorious note in an interview with Xinhua. The Nobel 'is not only a joyous occasion for Mo, but also a dream come true for generations of Chinese writers,' he was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

The award will likely boost Mo Yan's profile abroad--several literary editors in New York on Thursday morning said they were unfamiliar with Mo Yan's work. However, Michael Dirda, who won a 1993 Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism, suggested that the selection is part of a broader process reshaping global culture. 'This is part of the ongoing internationalization of literature,' said Mr. Dirda. 'We are making best sellers from the books of every country of the world.'

Penguin Books, an imprint of Pearson PSON.LN +0.56% PLC's Penguin Group (USA) said Thursday that it is reprinting 15,000 paperback copies of Mo Yan's novel 'Red Sorghum' and is exploring acquiring digital rights to the title.

Elsewhere, Arcade Publishing, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, said it has five titles available in print and digitally, including the novel 'Big Breasts & Wide Hips,' reissued earlier this year. 'We've now got orders for all copies on hand and we're going to press,' said Cal Barksdale, Arcade's executive editor.

A third publisher, the University of Oklahoma Press, in February will publish Mo Yan's novel 'Sandalwood Death,' translated by Howard Goldblatt, as a $24.95 paperback. 'This is a new venture for us, because we focus mainly on the West,' said Steven Baker, managing editor.

Like his fellow Nobel laureate Mr. Liu, Mo Yan got a graduate degree in literature from Beijing Normal University, though the two weren't there at the same time. That coincidence was duly noted by users of Sina Corp.'s SINA -0.49% Weibo microblogging platform, where the Nobel news was the No. 1 trending topic Thursday night.

'Beijing Normal is awesome, producing two Nobel laureates for China,' wrote online commentator Song Shinan in a post that was later deleted. 'Congratulations Mo Yan.'

Hundreds of thousands of Weibo users flooded the site with victorious messages and praise for the writer, including former Google China chief Kai-fu Lee, who wrote that he hoped 'Chinese people will win Nobel Prizes in every category.'

Others were more circumspect, however.

'Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize and I congratulate him. A group of people outside of China have validated his literary efforts and accomplishments, and that is all,' wrote well-known independent columnist Zhao Chu. 'At the same time, I'm certain that if [1929 Nobel laureate] Thomas Mann had been a member of the writer's association under the Third Reich and had hand-copied a commemorative edition of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf,' his having been awarded the prize would weaken the value of the Nobel.'

Swedish Academy member Per Wästberg said in a chat with readers on the website of Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet that the academy doesn't care about the political views of writers.

'All choices岸which are based on literary quality, and nothing else岸are in some way controversial in their effects,' he said, noting Mo Yan's Communist Party membership.

Howard Goldblatt, who has translated nine Mo Yan works into English, in an interview called the writer's imagery 'striking' and said Mo Yan isn't a government apologist.

'He knows the rules, knows the parameters, as do all writers in China,' said Mr. Goldblatt. 'He doesn't speak for the government. Some of his books have received unpleasant notices from Chinese literary officials and he doesn't care.'

Brendan O'Kane, a Beijing-based writer and translator of Chinese fiction, said: 'For Mo and other Chinese authors, it's not a matter of cowardice or bravery; it's a matter of relevance versus irrelevance. Direct criticism of the government, as in the work of [dissident writers] Liao Yiwu or Ma Jian, plays well overseas, but is not realistic for most authors given the state of publisher- and government-enforced censorship in China.'

In a 2008 interview in Spanish newspaper El Pa赤s, Mo Yan described the reason for his pen name:

'I picked the nickname in memory of the years in which I couldn't say a word to anyone. It was during the turbulent days of the Cultural Revolution, when there were conflicts among people in my village all the time. My father was a farmer, but my family enjoyed a comfortable position, and he was afraid that I may say something inconvenient which could get our family in trouble. So he told me not to speak and to appear to be a mute.'

When asked in the El Pa赤s interview when he thought a Chinese writer living and working in China will be recognized with a Nobel Prize, answered, ''Maybe in 100 years.'