With Mo Yan winning the Nobel Prize in Literature for the year 2012, his books are selling like hot cakes. Within half an hour after the announcement was made, his books were sold out in China.
Mo's novel "Big Breasts & Wide Hips", which has been translated by Howard Goldblatt into English, narrates the tale of a mother, who goes through a period of intense struggle and numerous hardships; and also talks about the intertwined fates with Chinese people in the 20th century. One of Mo Yan's more recent work 'Frog' has quite explicitly and openly criticized his country, China's one-child family policy. This policy is said to have aided in controlling China's population explosion on the one side but on the flip side has spelled doom for the rural residents in the span of past 60 years.
It is as if there is complete turn of tide in the direction of Mo Yan. First of all, is the 'sold out' tag that he earned within half an hour of his being declared as the winner of the most coveted literary prize, Nobel Prize in Literature - 2012. Second, it has been decided that his short novel, 'A Transparent Carrot', written in the year 1985, will be studied by senior students of high schools as part of their school curriculum. the novella describes the lives and inner worlds of ordinary Chinese people with the backdrop being countryside. The novella is famous for Mo's stylistic features used in writing. And it is for this very reason that it gained fame very quickly when it was published. The books boasts of sharp descriptions that are covered in fantastical light by the author.
Some important points that need to be pondered upon by all the readers in every part of the world: Why does an author need to win a prize to get noticed and read? Why is that the author, who has been called as a man "who has no principles", is suddenly fit to be read in schools?
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