Le Maître a de plus en plus d'humour

by Mo Yan

128 pages

Published January 26, 2024

About the author

Modern Chinese author, in the western world most known for his novel Red Sorghum (which was turned into a movie by the same title). Often described as the Chinese Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.

Mo Yan (莫言) is a pen name and means don't speak. His real name is Guan Moye (simplified Chinese: 管谟业; traditional Chinese: 管謨業; pinyin: Guǎn Móyè).

He has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 for his work which "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". Among the works highlighted by the Nobel judges were Red Sorghum (1987) and Big Breasts & Wide Hips (2004), as well as The Garlic Ballads.

Chinese version: 莫言

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second book I've read by Chinese Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan (born 1955). Not a novel, but a novella (fewer than 100 pages). Ding Shikou is fired a month before his retirement and finds himself in dire financial straits. But through a creative, semi-legal method, he manages to generate a substantial income, though he doesn't feel comfortable with it. It's a pleasant story, told in a lighthearted manner, with a clear social underlayer. But the weak ending is a real letdown.