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Mo Yan wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Mo Yan wins world's highest honour for literature with writing rooted in Chinese tradition and influenced by Western peers

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Mo Yan in Hong Kong in 2005. "There are many outstanding writers in China and their works also deserve recognition by the world," he said yesterday. Photo: SCMP

Author Mo Yan made history yesterday by becoming the first Chinese national to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

Although mainland-born Gao Xingjian won the literature prize 12 years ago, he was by then a French citizen, after moving to France in 1987.

The Swedish Academy, which oversees the 111-year-old prize, hailed Mo Yan for his "hallucinatory realism" which merged "folk tales, history and the contemporary", when it announced the 8 million Swedish krona (HK$9.25 million) award in Stockholm.

"He has such a damn unique way of writing," the academy's permanent secretary, Peter Englund, told Swedish television.

"If you read half a page of Mo Yan you immediately recognise it as him. He was at home with his dad [when told he had won the award]. He said he was overjoyed and terrified."

Certainly he is outstanding enough to be the vanguard of Chinese literature on the world stage

Mo Yan is a pen name which means "don't speak". His real name is Guan Moye .

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