Chinese won Nobel Literature Prize!!!

[kopiuncle]

STOCKHOLM: Chinese author Mo Yan on Thursday won the Nobel Literature Prize for writing that mixes folk tales, history and the contemporary, the Swedish Academy announced.

"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," the Swedish Academy said.

Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye and was born in 1955, "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary," the jury said.

Mo Yan has published novels, short stories and essays on various topics, and despite his social criticism is seen in his homeland as one of the foremost contemporary authors, the Nobel committee noted.

In his writing Mo Yan draws on his youthful experiences and on settings in the province of his birth.

Last year, the literature prize went to Swedish poet Tomas Transtroemer.

The literature prize is the fourth and one of the most watched announcements this Nobel season, following the prizes for medicine, physics and chemistry earlier this week.

The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday, with the field of possible winners wide open, followed by the Economics Prize on Monday, wrapping up the Nobel season.

As tradition dictates, the laureates will receive their prizes at formal ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of prize creator Alfred Nobel in 1896.

Because of the economic crisis, the Nobel Foundation has slashed the prize sum to eight million Swedish kronor ($1.2 million, 930,000 euros) per award, down from the 10 million kronor awarded since 2001.

-AFP/ac

 

[blur sotong]

Long overdue.

 

[yellowarse]

He had one of the shortest odds going into the home stretch alongside Haruki Murakami and Alison Munro.

Congrats!

When will we have a Sinkie laureate?

 

[kopiuncle]

Chinese author Mo Yan has become the first Chinese author ever to win the Nobel prize in literature.

The Swedish Academy, announcing his win this lunchtime, said that "with hallucinatory realism", Mo Yan "merges folktales, history and the contemporary". His win makes him the first Chinese writer to win the Nobel in its 111-year history: although Gao Xingjian won in 2000, and was born in China, he is now a French citizen; and although Pearl Buck took the prize in 1938, for "her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces", she is an American author.

The Nobel goes to the writer "who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction", with previous winners including Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing and, last year, the Swedish poet Tomas Tranströmer.

Mo Yan's writing, said head of the Swedish Academy Peter Englund this lunchtime, draws from his peasant background, and from the folktales he was told as a child. Leaving school at 12, the author went to work in the fields, eventually gaining an education in the army. He published his first book in 1981, but he first found literary success with Red Sorghum, a novel which was also made into an internationally successful movie by Zhang Yimou.

"He writes about the peasantry, about life in the countryside, about people struggling to survive, struggling for their dignity, sometimes winning but most of the time losing," said Englund. "The basis for his books was laid when as a child he listened to folktales. The description magical realism has been used about him, but I think that is belittling him – this isn't something he's picked up from Gabriel García Márquez, but something which is very much his own. With the supernatural going in to the ordinary, he's an extremely original narrator."

The eminent professor of Chinese literature Howard Goldblatt, who has translated many of Mo Yan's works into English, compared the author's writing to Dickens in a recent interview with China Daily, saying that both write "big, bold works with florid, imagistic, powerful writing and a strong moral core".

"I see parallels with works like William Vollmann's Europe Central, with its historical sweep (Red Sorghum) and trenchant criticism of monstrous behavior by those in power (The Garlic Ballads)," said Goldblatt. "And, of course, there are writers Mo seems to prefer, the modernist Faulkner, the magic-realist Garcia Marquez, and the Japanese

Oe Kenzaburo. And don't forget another "oldie": Rabelais, with his bawdy humour and scatological exuberances."

Goldblatt said that the author's satirical novel Jiuguo (The Republic of Wine) "may be the most technically innovative and sophisticated novel from China I've read", while his Shengsi pilao (Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out) is "a brilliant extended fable", and Tanxiangxing (Sandalwood Death) "is, as the author contends, musical in its beauty".

Red Sorghum is made up of five interwoven stories, set over several decades during the 20th century, touching on topics including the Japanese occupation and the difficult lives of poor farm workers. Mo Yan's 1996 novel Fengru feitun, translated into English as Big Breasts and Wide Hips in 2004, portrays 20th century China through the life of a single family, starting with the story of Xuan'er, six months old in 1900 when she is abandoned in a vat of flour. "By the time she has blossomed into the province's number-one golden lotus girl, her bound feet are no longer in vogue and the best her aunt can do is marry her to a blacksmith in exchange for his mule. But this is no Wild Swans - from here, Mo Yan, author of Red Sorghum, steers his provocative story towards a masculine perspective, as he follows one family through China's war with Japan to the cultural revolution and beyond," said the Guardian in its review, which called the book an "astonishing" novel. "Blending bawdy humour, gory violence and pungent imagery, Mo Yan paints a unique portrait of China's 20th century, and cleverly dramatises the unsustainable predicament of a society fixated on bearing boys."

The author's most recent novel, Wa, is the story of the consequences of the single-child policy implemented in China.

Nicky Harman, a Chinese translator and lecturer at Imperial College, London, hailed Mo Yan's win as "amazing" news. "He's a great writer and will now be better known. That's good news for all Chinese writers, because it will bring English readers a bit closer," she said. "I'm sure they will be deliriously happy in China. He's very well thought of there."

Informing Mo Yan – a pen name meaning "don't speak" – of his win today, Englund said the author, who was at the home in China where he lives with his 90-year-old father – was "overjoyed and scared".

 

[myo539]

,... Congrats! When will we have a Sinkie laureate?

How are author Dr Chee Soon Juan's books on democracy and human rights?
Can win Nobel Prize or not?

 

[kopiuncle]

Mo Yan was born in the northeast Gaomi township in Shandong province to a family of farmers. He left school during the Cultural Revolution to work in a factory that produced oil. He joined the People's Liberation Army at age twenty, and began writing while he was still a soldier, in 1981.

"Mo Yan", meaning "don't speak" in Chinese, is a pen name. His given name is Guan Moye. In a public speech delivered at the Open University of Hong Kong, he said that the name was chosen when he wrote his first novel. Because he was well known to be frank in his speech, which was not welcomed in mainland China, he chose the name to remind himself not to speak too much.

 

[THE_CHANSTER]

The Chinese really are a fickle bunch. Just 2 years ago, they were criticizing the Nobel Committee over awarding the Peace Prize to Liu Xiabo calling the awarding of the prize "a political farce" and refusing to broadcast any mention of the award in the Chinese media.

No doubt now they will be saying what an honor that this year's literature prize has gone to a Chinese and give Mo Yan 24 hour blanket coverage.

 

[yellowarse]

How are author Dr Chee Soon Juan's books on democracy and human rights?
Can win Nobel Prize or not?

Dr Chee will one day be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, following in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.

 

[Vigilante911]

"with hallucinatory realism"


What??

 

[tonychat]

How are author Dr Chee Soon Juan's books on democracy and human rights?
Can win Nobel Prize or not?

That is not for noble prize winning. That is to kick PAP ass out of the govt and wake those low life coward sinkies up.

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

Yeah!!!!!! Not bad sia.

Opps cannot feel proud sia cos we are all individuals but the minute i complain about discrimination we are no more individuals.

 

[kopiuncle]

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, adding:

"He has such a damn unique way of writing. If you read half a page of Mo Yan you immediately recognize 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 mesmerizing," Englund told Reuters television.

 

[Extremist]

i like his work 红高粱

 

[chorut]

Will the literature be translated to England.

 

[Fook Seng]

The Chinese really are a fickle bunch. Just 2 years ago, they were criticizing the Nobel Committee over awarding the Peace Prize to Liu Xiabo calling the awarding of the prize "a political farce" and refusing to broadcast any mention of the award in the Chinese media.

The Peace Prize is always a very controversial thing. There are always two sides, one supporting the awardee, the other against. It is such a political award. There was a time when this award was given to non-controversial people who were politically neutral and really contributed to world peace e.g. Madam Theresa and Albert Schweitzer. But time has changed.

 

[shOUTloud]

I always wonder about the Literature prize. Unlike the other science-based prize, how does one compare across languages? How does the Swede decide that a Chinese author deserves the prize?

 

[Newasia]

Mo Yan wins 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature

2012 Nobel Prize for literature went to Chinese writer Mo Yan, the first Chinese citizen to claim the prize.

 

[Cruxx]

He had one of the shortest odds going into the home stretch alongside Haruki Murakami and Alison Munro.

Congrats!

When will we have a Sinkie laureate?

Singaporeans have no talent.

 

[Jah_rastafar_I]

The Peace Prize is always a very controversial thing. There are always two sides, one supporting the awardee, the other against. It is such a political award. There was a time when this award was given to non-controversial people who were politically neutral and really contributed to world peace e.g. Madam Theresa and Albert Schweitzer. But time has changed.

The most controversial one must be the one given to obama.

 

[THE_CHANSTER]

The Peace Prize is always a very controversial thing. There are always two sides, one supporting the awardee, the other against. It is such a political award. There was a time when this award was given to non-controversial people who were politically neutral and really contributed to world peace e.g. Madam Theresa and Albert Schweitzer. But time has changed.

Yes, that's true, especially when the prize goes to the incumbent President of the United States.

I'll be very interested who gets this award tomorrow.