Hey look, a Mo Yan sighting. It looks like the floodgates have opened as far as interviews, too. It wasn’t long ago that his first interview since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature was published by Der Spiegel.
Since accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature on December 10, the controversial Mo Yan has turned down every formal interview request from every publication in the world. But he finally broke his silence last week, granting a sit-down with Germany’s Der Spiegel, one of Europe’s largest news weeklies. The article was published in this week’s (February 25)... Read more »
Richard Burger of The Peking Duck has rightly directed our attention to A.E. Clark’s recent essay on Mo Yan, “Mo Yan’s Middle Finger,” in which Clark analyzes the three stories Mo told in his Nobel lecture on December 7. You’ll remember that the stories — obviously fables — came toward the end of Mo’s speech,... Read more »
That last video we just put up of a man streaking outside the Nobel Banquet Hall in Stockholm wasn’t just some prankster after a laugh, or a drunk man who’d lost his wits. It was part of a coordinated protest featuring none other than Liao Yiwu, author of The Corpse Walker and the recipient of... Read more »
In Stockholm on Monday, on the night of the Nobel banquet, a man dashed butt-naked through the cold and snow, his ebullient battle cry resonating across the dark Swedish night. Wherefore?
According to SVT News (via Notes on the Mosquito, a website about the poetry of Xi Chuan), the streaker was protesting Mo Yan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature. (We don't know Swedish, but we see very clearly after putting the article through Google Translate that Mo Yan is involved.) He was also very drunk, which most people have to be to denude in subfreezing temperatures.
I’ll leave the parsing to others, but here’s the body of Mo Yan’s meticulously arranged speech at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony last night: I am well aware that there are many writers in the world who would be more worthy Laureates than I. I am convinced that if they only continue to write, if... Read more »
Mo Yan gave his traditional Nobel lecture, "Storytellers," about 10 hours ago at the Royal Swedish Academy in Stockholm. He was introduced by Kjell Espmark, member of the Nobel literature committee.
Mo's 32-minute talk has already been translated by the preeminent Howard Goldblatt, here, which you should take a minute to read before letting the news media inundate the conversation with all their cherry-picked selections that fit their narrative.
As Mo Yan prepares to speak in Stockholm — in less than 10 minutes, at 12:30 am local time, barring delays — the piece you should read if you haven’t already is Kenyon College assistant professor Anna Sun’s essay in the current issue of The Kenyon Review. Here’s an excerpt from “The Diseased Language of... Read more »
Chinese students in Stockholm participated in a "Red Sorghum" flashmob at Galleria Department Store yesterday to "express joy and pride at Mo Yan winning the Nobel prize." One-hundred-eight people took part.
Mo is scheduled to give his speech at 5:30 pm Central European Time (12:30 am in China). You can watch it live on the Nobel Prize website.
Mo Yan is scheduled to leave tomorrow for Stockholm, according to South China Morning Post, where on Friday he’ll deliver his speech to the Swedish Academy and the following Monday will attend the award ceremony. Netizens all want to know: not what he will say (probably nothing, per his name), but what he will wear.... Read more »
