Mo Yan Speaks: Lectures and Speeches by the Nobel Laureate from China by Mo Yan, translated and edited by Shiyan Xu (Cambria Press) has just been published.
Nobel Laureate Mo Yan, whose name literally means “don’t speak,” is renowned for his fiction, which the Nobel Prize Foundation notes “merges folk tales, history and the contemporary” “with hallucinatory realism.” His works include The Garlic Ballads; Red Sorghum; Shifu, You’ll Do Anything for a Laugh; Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out; The Republic of Wine; and Big Breasts and Wide Hips (all translated into English by Professor Howard Goldblatt). Mo Yan’s fiction has captivated a global audience for years, and his speeches are just as riveting. They provide rare insights into the complex thought processes of one of the most influential writers in the world. Mo Yan’s passion for this work comes across clearly in his lectures and speeches, reinforcing the strong emotions his works evoke in his readers. Many of these speeches have been translated into Japanese and Korean, and they are now finally available in English. From the writers who have influenced him to the relationship between his life and his works, these speeches offer an extraordinary window in Mo Yan’s world and will help us appreciate his works even more.
Read an excerpt (“I used to be so scared of ghosts and monsters, but I have never encountered any… and now it’s human beings that really strike fear in me.”—Mo Yan ) from chapter 15, “Fear and Hope” here.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Jonathan Stalling
Introduction
- The Smell of Fiction
- Fiction and Society
- The Tradition of Chinese Fiction
- Writing What You Most Want to Write
- Ten Major Relationships of Contemporary Literature
- My American Books
- Mysterious Japan and My Literary Journey
- The Infinite Merits of Translators
- Ramblings on Strindberg
- One Man’s Bible
- The Anxiety of Influence
- Literature Is the World’s
- Fiction’s Function Is Greater Than Social Criticism
- The Mysterious Cow of My Home
- Fear and Hope
- My Literary Journey
- Why I Write
- Reading with My Ears
- Six Lives in Search of a Character
- Writing Has Its Own Road
- Writing as One of the Common People
- Literature and Youth
- A Modest Proposal on Literary Individuality
Index
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK
“To have a Nobel laureate’s take on literature is invaluable—it is all the more the case for Mo Yan, whose name means ‘Don’t Speak’! It is a significant contribution to the literary world that his insights will now be available to English-language readers for the first time in this priceless book, which contains important speeches and lectures by this writer whose impact on world literature continues to grow.” —Professor Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, Nobel Laureate
“Mo Yan’s public speeches are extremely insightful, not only in respect to his views of written, translated, and read literature but also concerning the role of literature—including its appeal and its limitations—in contemporary society. Mo Yan Speaks enhances our appreciation of his published fiction.” —Professor Howard Goldblatt, translator of Mo Yan’s novels and collections; Guggenheim Fellow; and Research Professor, University of Notre Dame
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR AND EDITOR
Shiyan Xu is Professor of English at Nanjing Normal University and holds a PhD from Nanjing University. She is Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Chinese Arts and Letters, a journal whose aim is to translate works of Chinese literature and introduce them to the English-speaking world. In addition to several journal articles, her previous publications include The “Weather Vane” of Mainstream Theatre: Study of the Pulitzer Plays in the 21st Century. Dr. Xu also translated Eugene O’Neill’s newest biography Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts (Yale University Press, 2014), which was published in 2018 by Nanjing University Press and won the prestigious Purple Mountain Prize in Literary Translation awarded by the Jiangsu Writers’ Association.
TO ORDER THE BOOK
Mo Yan Speaks is now available in hardcover and paperback editions. Save 25% on publisher-direct orders for print editions (hardcover and paperback)—use coupon code SAVE25 at the Cambria Press website https://www.cambriapress.com/MoYanSpeaks. E-book versions will be available soon.