Red Sorghum

Mo Yan (literally “don’t speak”) is the pen name of Guan Moye. Born in 1955 to a peasant family in Shandong province, China, he is the author of ten novels, including Frog and Red Sorghum, which was made into a feature film; dozens of novellas; and hundreds of short stories. Mo Yan is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature and the 2009 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. He has won virtually every Chinese literary prize, including the Mao Dun Literature Prize in 2011 (China’s most prestigious literary award) and is the most critically acclaimed Chinese writer of his generation, in both China and around the world. He lives in Beijing.

Howard Goldblatt is the foremost translator of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the West. He has published English translations of more than 30 novels and story collections by writers from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. He has also authored and edited half a dozen books on Chinese literature. He is currently a professor at the University of Notre Dame.