bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

A comic tale of transformation in rural China spanning 50 years and interwoven with Buddhist philosophy has been named the winner of a Baptist University award for Chinese literature.
Life, Death, Trial, by Shandong-born author Mo Yan, was announced yesterday as the recipient of the HK$300,000 Dream of the Red Chamber Award.
The literary prize, named after a Qing dynasty (1644-1911) classic novel, began in 2006. This is the second time  it has been awarded.
Mo, who is in Beijing and was informed of his win by phone, said he felt 'quite calm' upon hearing of the six-digit windfall.
The 450,000-character novel was written in just 43 days.
'Although it was written very quickly, I planned this story for a very long time,' he said.
'The original inspiration came to me when I was just seven or eight years old.
'I wrote it in August 2005, while staying in a very rural place near Beijing. There was no telephone, so people couldn't reach me. I just wrote the whole time and didn't get much sleep.'
The novel documents life in a rural commune in Shandong province  between 1950 and  2000 as it undergoes the massive social and political upheavals that swept  the mainland in the period.
'I could not have written this in the 1980s,' he said.
Mo said many elements of the story were 'very personal'.
Harvard University chair professor of Chinese literature David Wang Der-wei,  a member of the selection panel, said the judges had been won over by the author's inventiveness and the historical scope of his subject matter.
'He has shown a new way of looking at what history is,' Professor Wang said.
Judges were particularly impressed by Mo's use of farm animals as narrators of the story, as a central character is reincarnated as a donkey, an ox, a pig, a dog and a monkey before finally returning to human form.
Taiwanese author Sih-ma Jhong-yuan,  another judge, said the use of animals 'perfectly matched' the changing face of the  Communist Party over the past half-century.
The judges also selected for special recognition Words of Shamaness by Taiwanese author Chu Tien-wen,  An Era of Enlightenment by Wang Anyi  from Shanghai, and Multi-Histories of Time: Light on Matte Porcelain by local novelist Dung Kai-cheung.



Top prize for novel written in 43 days