Mo Yan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Time Magazine profiled the author, here.

From the piece...


For Eric Abrahamsen, a Beijing-based translator of modern Chinese fiction, it is clear that Mo Yan engages in the complex calculus of what is and isn't permissible that faces every Chinese writer. There is nothing wrong with that: not every artist has the stomach for strident dissent and, having been banned in the past, Mo Yan has nothing to prove. But these days, says Abrahamsen, Mo Yan "knows exactly where the lines are and doesn't cross them." Discussion about the drawbacks of the one-child policy, and whether it should be rolled back, is now permissible in China, for example. "I think the reason the book got published now is because it's not controversial anymore," says Abrahamsen.

Mo Yan is adamant that he never worries about censorship when choosing what to write about. "There are certain restrictions on writing in every country," he says, adding that the inability to attack some topics head on is actually an advantage. Such limitations make a writer "conform to the aesthetics of literature," Mo Yan argues. "One of the biggest problems in literature is the lack of subtlety. A writer should bury his thoughts deep and convey them through the characters in his novel."