Mo Yan Wins Nobel Literature Prize

PARIS — The Swedish Academy announced on Thursday that it had awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to the Chinese author Mo Yan, the cultural high point of a week of accolades to scientists, writers and peacemakers. 

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 García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition,” the citation for the award declared.In addition to novels, Mo Yan has published short stories, essays on various topics, and “despite his social criticism is seen in his homeland as one of the foremost contemporary authors.”Mr. Mo was born in 1955 in Gaomi, China, and, according to the academy, is resident in China. The citation for the award described him as a writer “who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the

contemporary.”The name Mo Yan is a pseudonym for Guan Moye. He is the son of farmers who left school during the Cultural Revolution to work, first in agriculture and later in a factory, according to his Nobel biography.In 1976 he joined the People’s Liberation Army and began to study literature and write. His first short story was published in a literary journal in 1981, the biography on the Nobel Web site said.

“In his writing Mo Yan draws on his youthful experiences and on settings in the province of his birth,”the biography said, referring to his 1987 novel published in English as Red Sorghum in 1993. His novel The Garlic Ballads, as it was called on its publication in English in 1995, and other works “have been judged subversive because of their sharp criticism of contemporary Chinese society.” 

Other works include Big Breasts and Wide Hips (1996), Life and Death are Wearing Me Out (2006) and Sandalwood Death, to be published in English in 2013. His most recent published work, called Wa in Chinese (2009) “illuminates the consequences of China’s imposition of a single-child policy.”

An understanding of Literature

As we know literature is a vague term, restricting its definition within a sentence won't be sufficient enough. All sort of written prose and verse- be it in the form of fiction, essay, play or poetry, are literature. Though many writers may not agree with this fact but in fact, any written sentence is literature if it gives meaning. The assignment done by the student in his/her textbook is also a kind of literature. Literature is an art. And an art is an expression. So, the expression in the form of written words is no doubt literature. 
 

Each genres of literature are distinct to each other in their own manner. And within each genre, each literary work is discrete. It is because each individual is different with its presence of mind in one's way. And this diverseness of mind in human being is the corner part that has been able to make literature so vague and immense. 


Way of expressing through words is literature (already mentioned above). But we witness varieties in the presentation of our expression. The assortment is owing to various reasons. Some are very good to put their thoughts in a very symmetrical form whereas some fails. Likewise, some may feel comfortable to express in verse. Songs, poem, ballad and sonnets are some forms of poetry. Similarly, some other may choose fiction, play or essay as the best medium to express their inner-most thoughts. The genres of literature are distinct with their own unique features and importance. And the choice of genre to express varies from individual to individual. 

Just sitting inside the room, you travel across the globe. The most important thing is that you feel the human sensation just by going through words. It is the most enigmatic thing about literature, I think, which fascinates most of us to read and write literature. Just turning pages of the literature text, you face fills with glee in a second and tears in the next moment. Without writing, you express yourself just going through others writing. Isn't it so awesome? No doubt, it is really the most enigmatic entity human being discovered. The real-reader of literature reaches beyond human happiness and satisfaction. To wrap it all up, literature is power. 

Additionally, literature is the divine source of knowledge. It can help to broaden our horizon of mind as it deals with various facets of life from material to abstract one. Not only this, but it can play decisive role to bring change in the day to day conduct of the reader. It ascends individual from the world of materialism to spirituality. It makes virtues differentiating between scrupulous and unscrupulous, descent and ascent. It paves way for the betterment and only betterment. Also, in other words, it is philosophy. 

Thus, it is the discovery which aims for the betterment of the human life through human being themselves. It is the invention through which many inventions have been made possible later.