M o Yan Wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, an unexpected choice by a prize committee that has favored European authors in recent years.

The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, praised Mr. Mo's "hallucinatoric realism," saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."His breakthrough came with novel Red Sorghum published in 1987. Set in a small village, like much of his fiction, Red Sorghum is an earthy tale of love and peasant struggles set against the backdrop of the anti-Japanese war. It was turned into a film that won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988, marked the directing debut of Zhang Yimou and boosted Mr. Mo's popularity. One of his recent books, The Garlic Ballads, has been ordered for the Hoffman Family Library.

Source: Swedish Academy and Wall Street Journal