In awarding the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mo Yan, the Swedish Academy has recognized one of China’s best-known writers, and also fulfilled one of the Chinese government’s most enduring pursuits: a politically tolerable Nobel laureate. The citation says: “Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition.” Mo Yan, who is as little known abroad as many of his fellow laureates, is a major figure at home, known for novels including “Big Breasts and Wide Hips,” “Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out,” “Wa,” “Sandalwood Death,”“Red Sorghum”—and a range of essays and short stories. (“Red Sorghum” became a popular film of the same name, by Zhang Yimou, which was popular in the West.) 

The People’s Republic has sought a Nobel Prize in Literature so avidly and for so long that it became a national psychological fixation—China’s “Nobel complex,” as commentators and television shows often put it. (Julia Lovell wrote a good book about China’s pursuit of the literature prize.)Achieving it was always seen as a referendum on China’s cultural development, and a measure of authority around the world. For that reason, the Chinese press has exulted in Mo Yan’s win, hailing this as a “history-making first”—the first Chinese national to win the literature prize.