Nobel laureate in literature Mo Yan

STOCKHOLM - Chinese writer Mo Yan has won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, announced Peter Englund, Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on Thursday.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 is awarded to Chinese writer Mo Yan "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary," said Englund at a press conference.

Mo Yan, meaning "not to speak", is a pseudonym for Guan Moye.

Born into a farmers' family in Gaomi in Shandong province, eastern China in 1955, Mo Yan had the experiences of working in the field in countryside and in a factory.

In 1976, he joined the People's Liberation Army and during this time began to study literature and write. His first short story was published in a literary journal in 1981 and his first breakthrough was the 1986 publication of a novel Touming de hong luobo, which was translated into French in 1993.

His novel Hong gaoliang jiazu (1987, in English Red Sorghum 1993) was successfully filmed in 1987, directed by famous Chinese director Zhang Yimou.

Fengru feitun (1996, in English Big Breasts and Wide Hips 2004) is a broad historical fresco portraying 20th-century China through the microcosm of a single family.

The novel Shengsi pilao (2006, in English Life and Death are Wearing Me Out 2008) uses black humor to describe everyday life in China.

His work Wa (in English Frog 2009) has also been translated into French.

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 academy commented in the biographical statement.

In addition to his novels, Mo Yan has published many short stories and essays on various topics.

Dozens of his works have been translated into English, French and Japanese and many other languages.