Literature enthusiasts across China have mauled bookstores in search of novels by author Mo Yan. The Chinese writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 11, but his books were sold out even before Nobel Committee made the announcement.

"About 5,000 copies of one of Mo's novels have sold out," said Tang Zhengyu, Director of the Marketing Department at the Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing Group.

Finding Mo's books online isn't easy either; even the largest Chinese shopping sites have run out of Mo's novels.

When Mo learned he was likely to win the Nobel Prize, he returned to his hometown in Gaomi County in east China's Shandong Province to stay with his father and maintain a low profile. He learned the news on TV.

"Winning the Nobel Prize means that I will have to meet many journalists in the following days," Mo said. "Undoubtedly, the Nobel Prize in Literature is the world's highest award for literature. However, in history, many great writers never had the chance to win the prize, such as Leo Tolstoy and Franz Kafka, while not all winners of the prize deserve the title."

Mo's winning has elicited various responses from writers and literary critics.

"In the past, the Nobel Prize in literature was mostly awarded to European writers. The Chinese have always wished that the judges would pay more attention to Chinese writers," said Wu Di, Director of the Institute of Comparative and World Literature at Zhejiang University.

"It's surprising that the Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to a Chinese. It indicates that Chinese literature has grabbed worldwide recognition. From now on we don't need to care much about winning the Nobel Prize but can focus more on our writing," said Zhang Yiwu, Professor of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking University.

Editor-in-chief of Lifeweek, Zhu Wei said on his microblog that the Swedish Academy had recognized Mo's in-depth analysis of the Chinese way of life.

"Mo's winning has aroused the Chinese people's love for reading. People can get immersed in reading books again like they did in the late 1970s and the early 1980s," said Sun Yuemu, Director of China Book Business Report.

Reading between the lines

Before winning the Nobel Prize, Mo had already won a number of international awards. In January 2005, he won the 30th International NONINO Prize. His works have been praised for their roots in ancient Chinese civilization, and he has been lauded as a writer with a rich imagination and unique technique.

However, for a long time, Mo and many other Chinese writers did not get the recognition they perhaps deserved because much of the meaning of their works was lost in translation. A review published on the Singapore-based Zaobao on October 9 said that the Chinese don't need to attach much value to the Nobel Prize for Literature because it only evaluates literary works in alphabetic languages, and alphabetic languages cannot present the depth and richness of Chinese works.

Therefore, Mo's win could largely be attributed to his translators. Anna Gustafsson Chen, the Swedish translator of many modern Chinese literary works, translated three of Mo's books published in Sweden this year. Howard Goldblatt, a master in translating contemporary Chinese literary works, has also introduced Mo's works to the English-speaking world by translating a dozen of his works. "I love all of Mo's novels and enjoy translating them," Goldblatt said. Noël Dutrait won the Laure Bataillin Award together with Mo, and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres medal for translating The Republic of Wine into French in 2001.

"Chinese literary works cannot have an impact on the world without being translated into foreign languages by great translators," said Tan Wuchang, Director of the Contemporary Chinese Poem Research Center at Beijing Normal University.

The influence of foreign writers is another key to Mo's success.

After China's reform and opening up in late 1970s, Western literature was introduced to China, which Mo devoured. Mo is regarded as bearing a strong resemblance to the 1982 Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. The Nobel Committee in Sweden praised Mo's "hallucinatory realism," which blends aspects of "folk tales, history and the contemporary," and said that his works reminded people of Márquez's and William Faulkner's works.

Mo said that if he had read One Hundred Years of Solitude beforehand, he might have adopted a different writing approach to Red Sorghum.