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Mo Yan

Biography

Mo Yan

Mo Yan (literally “don’t speak”) is the pen name of Guan Moye. Born in 1955 to a peasant family in Shandong province, he is the author of 10 novels, including FROG and RED SORGHUM, which was made into a feature film, dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. Mo Yan is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature and the 2009 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. He has won virtually every Chinese literary prize, including the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2011 (China’s most prestigious literary award) and is the most critically acclaimed Chinese writer of his generation, in both China and around the world. He lives in Beijing.

Mo Yan

Books by Mo Yan

written by Mo Yan, translated by Howard Goldblatt - Fiction

FROG opens with a playwright nicknamed Tadpole, who plans to write about his aunt. In her youth, Gugu --- the beautiful daughter of a famous doctor and staunch Communist --- is revered for her skill as a midwife. But when her lover defects, Gugu’s own loyalty to the Party is questioned. She decides to prove her allegiance by strictly enforcing the one-child policy, keeping tabs on the number of children in the village, and performing abortions on women as many as eight months pregnant.