For the extensive community of readers of Mo yan (and the new ones that are being incorporated) the author's name simply sounds like Chinese. And yet the meaning of the pseudonym is "do not speak", a statement of intentions from someone who was advised not to speak in the days of Mao Zedong.
And Guan Moye, who was the name of the boy who followed parental advice on the convenience of silence, ended up turning his story around to end up writing, instead of talking, about whatever he wanted.
In fact, when Guan Moye enlisted in the Chinese army it seemed that he had perfectly internalized the doctrine of silence and submission. Until in that same period, in the service of the State, he began to write...
He himself recognizes influences from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Tolstoy or faulkner, but Mo Yan's final literary drift extended into a creation with an undeniable imprint that, although it appears perfectly inserted in Chinese forms and traditions, acquires a great point or universal intention thanks to a critical viewing at times, always deeply empathetic with the soul of his characters and absolutely masterful in mastering the tempo of a plot that can sometimes be divided chronologically to create that usual literary expectation about the events narrated.
Top 3 recommended books by Mo Yan
Big breasts, wide hips
Presenting under this title a novel that is supposed to delve into the history of a country like China already anticipates a breakthrough point for a state that is certainly sometimes recognized for its censorship and ideological narrowness.
And of course, it is also about feminizing the story, hence the title and hence the prominence of Shangguan Lu and his incessant search for the male child he could collect
the rights of a human being completely free and absolutely fit for any social or political act. In Shangguan we find a Chinese woman who fights, perhaps not for a full feminist consciousness but for the fundamental thing, the hope of survival.
And in the end we end up seeing the strength of the human being under the yoke of machismo, a brilliant portrait that incites and provokes, that liberates and recognizes value. Even more coming from a writer, in masculine ...
Because of the surprising treatment of the woman, and because of the story itself, which also brings them to her in terms of plot, I recognize this as her best novel.
Red sorghum
The cultivation of sorghum does not have to be understood as an alienating activity. And yet the circumstances that surround the fourth country that produces this special cereal do end up being alienating.
And in that case sorghum is a brilliant metaphor of alienation and slavery brought by Mo Yan to this novel. At times with overtones of a fable that rescues a scene from the Chinese province of Shangdong during the Japanese invasion, and at other times an open denunciation of meats open from dawn to dusk in exchange for slogans that do not feed.
Life as a renunciation, a self-denial in favor of the current leader. The red fields swayed by light currents of air like evocations of the memory of a town.
In the midst of the bucolic and heartbreaking scene, characters like Commander Yu and his beloved Jiu'er ignored by her father in favor of family prosperity, sold and outraged in the soul, until the red sorghum takes on the tint of blood...
Life and death are wearing me down
Ximen Nao, the patriarch of a wealthy Chinese family with large estates, takes the author's voice to tell us in a unique way what became of his family...
Because Ximen Nao is dead, he just doesn't want to miss the opportunity of this book to show us his glories and miseries. Walking through the eyes of domestic animals, so as not to be discovered, Ximen takes advantage of various minor reincarnations to walk through his emblematic wealthy family of the 20th century. And in the end we enjoy a traditional portrait of China at the end of the millennium while we enjoy the allegorical way of seeing everything through the narrating animals. A daring, fun and entirely recommendable novel.
