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Mo Yan Wins the Nobel Prize for Literature
For those of you who think you can bet on this competition, I say give up now and promise me you will never try again. Mo Yan of China has won the 20102 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Mo Yan
Born: 1955, Gaomi, China
Residence at the time of the award: China
Prize motivation: “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary”
Galley Cat have a wonderful mini write up on the author here, including links to Amazon kindle copies of some books that I can’t get in this country (groan). I haven’t read anything by this author, so it will be a race to see what I can nab over the next few weeks and give you some more information. Here is a peek at The Guardian’s review is here. They note this is the first Chinese Literature Nobel winner.
I know prizes are a fraught, but I tend to follow the Nobel and it rarely lets me down. I’ve loved all the writers from the last ten years or so, and I always find it provides a wonderful month or two of reading when I scramble to get as many of their books as possible. Elfride Jelinek is the only winner over the past few years that I had read everything I could get my hands on already.
Of course we also have to place ourselves in the hands of those precious translators for whom I am eternally grateful.
So here we go again this year! I now have Mo Yan to look forward to!
Lisa Thatcher 