Mo's works in line with Nobel vision
Amy Lai says Mo Yan's body of work clearly demonstrates his humanistic concerns, which is in line with the Nobel award's vision of literary merit
As expected, Beijing celebrated Mo Yan's award of the Nobel Prize for literature as a national triumph. Also unsurprisingly, though, critics and activists have questioned whether Mo's Communist Party membership qualifies him for the honour and whether the Swedish Academy sent the right message to the Chinese regime by honouring him.
The award committee tried to extract itself from this issue by claiming that it was "awarded on literary merit alone", especially for his use of "hallucinatory realism".
Yet, even if Mo's creativity may have been compromised by his party membership, his work is seen as critical of the government to the extent that some of his works have been banned.
Although his early novel Red Sorghum is often read as an allegory of the communist takeover of China, its ambivalent images and anti-authoritarian subtexts also allow an alternative interpretation that is sceptical of the communist government.
The Garlic Ballads, which reads like a rural version of the June 4 incident, is much less subtle in its criticism of official corruption. Likewise, his most recent novel, Frogs, criticises China's single-child policy and forced late-term abortions through the character of a midwife. Thus, the academy cannot be said to be endorsing the party or the regime by honouring Mo for his work.
Mo's award has allayed the fears that for Chinese writers to gain recognition from the West, they need to abandon the distinct quality of their works or, alternatively, construct Orientalist artefacts and imbue their work with exoticism. While Haruki Murakami, a Nobel contender, has often been criticised for the lack of "Japaneseness" in his post-modern fiction, similar accusations have not been made of Mo's stories, which combine magical realism with Chinese folk tales and history.