Contents
Mo Yan
Writing Red Sorghum and novels blending Chinese rural life, history and fantastical storytelling.
Red Sorghum · The Garlic Ballads
- Born
- 25 March 1956
- Birthplace
- Gaomi, China
More people
Mo Yan
Mo Yan is a Chinese novelist whose fictional landscapes draw heavily on his home region in Shandong.
Early life
Farming family
Grew up in rural Shandong.
Interrupted schooling
Left school during childhood and worked before entering the army.
Career
- 1976
Army service
Joined the People’s Liberation Army.
- 1980s
Fiction career
Began publishing stories and developed his distinctive rural narratives.
- 2012
Nobel Prize
Received the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Selected work
Red Sorghum
Linked family history with war and rural life.
The Garlic Ballads
Explored a farmers’ revolt.
Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Retold decades of change through reincarnation.
Beyond work
Pen name
Mo Yan means “don’t speak”; his birth name is Guan Moye.
Storytelling roots
Oral tales heard while growing up shaped his narrative imagination.
Sources & photo credit
Life, career and references ↗Nobel Prize biography and award ↗Author biography and preferred birth date ↗Photo: Johannes Kolfhaus, Gymn. Marienthal. CC BY-SA 3.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.
