Change

Author: Mo Yan Translation: Zeina Idris Literary Genre: Japanese Literature Number of Pages: 110 pages Publisher: Arab Scientific Publishers *Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2012* In his book, Change, Mo Yan, the Nobel laureate in literature for 2012, presents a personal view of the political and social changes in his country over the past few decades. In this novel disguised as an autobiography, or vice versa, unlike most historical novels about China, which are limited to political events, this work "represents the history of people," meaning a perspective from the bottom up, not the other way around, of a country in constant change. By moving forward and backward in time at the right moments, and focusing on small events and people's daily lives, Mo Yan brings history to life by describing the effects of enormous events on ordinary citizens. Through a mixture of imagination and reality, and with historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan created a world whose complexity is reminiscent of the worlds found in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez, while at the same time finding a starting point in ancient Chinese literature and oral traditions. Nobel Committee for Literature