Michel hockx mo yan biography

Chinese author Mo Yan expressed delight at having won this year's Nobel Prize in Literature, promising to "strive harder" in his writing.

Among the writers best-known books in the west are "Big Breasts and Wide Hips" and "The Republic of Wine."

Best known, however, is the 1987 novel "Red Sorghum," which portrays the hard lives of farmers in the early years of communist rule.

The book was made into a film - winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival - by Oscar-nominated director Zhang Yimou.

"Mo Yan is a marvelous storyteller,” Michel Hockx, Professor of Chinese literature at the School of African and Oriental Studies, told DW.

"His novels have a unique way of combining the grand narrative of modern Chinese history with the local color of Chinese rural communities."

Mo has himself known similar hardships to some of his fictional characters, having been forced to drop out of primary school and herd cattle during China