“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

Mo Yan is the Chinese writer and Nobel laureate whose best-selling books include Red Sorghum, The Garlic Ballads, The Republic of Wine, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, Sandalwood Death, Pow!, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out, and Frog.

About the editor

Shiyan Xu is Professor of English at Nanjing Normal University. She is also deputy editor-in-chief for Chinese Arts and Letters, a journal whose aim is to translate and introduce Chinese literature to the English-speaking world. She holds a PhD from Nanjing University. Her previous publications include “Weather Vane” of Mainstream Theatre: Study of the Pulitzer Plays in the 21st Century. She 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. She has published in various journals on literature and translation. Dr. Xu was also a visiting scholar in the Department of Theatre and Dance, University of California at Santa Barbara, and in the Chinese Literature Translation Archive, University of Oklahoma.

Foreword by Jonathan Stalling

Introduction

1. The Smell of Fiction

2. Fiction and Society

3. The Tradition of Chinese Fiction

4. Writing What You Most Want to Write

5. Ten Major Relationships of Contemporary Literature

6. My American Books

7. Mysterious Japan and My Literary Journey

8. The Infinite Merits of Translators

9. Ramblings on Strindberg

10. One Man’s Bible

11. The Anxiety of Influence

12. Literature Is the World’s

13. Fiction’s Function Is Greater Than Social Criticism

14. The Mysterious Cow of My Home

15. Fear and Hope

16. My Literary Journey

17. Why I Write

18. Reading with My Ears

19. Six Lives in Search of a Character

20. Writing Has Its Own Road

21. Writing as One of the Common People

22. Literature and Youth

23. A Modest Proposal on Literary Individuality

Index