Mo Yan's new work "Crocodile" was officially launched, and it has been urgently printed after the pre-sale opened
On June 19, Mo Yan's long-form drama "Crocodile", which was highly anticipated by readers, was officially released. According to the publisher Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House "KEY-Can Culture", since the pre-sale of the whole network opened on June 15, the book has received a hot response in the market, and has been urgently reprinted twice before the official listing on the 19th.
The play "Crocodile" is divided into four acts and nine scenes, mainly telling the story of the corrupt official Shan Wuxian who absconded from the United States around the gift "crocodile" at four birthday parties from 2005 to 2015. In late May this year, Mo Yan spoke with writer Wang Anyi and scholar Chen Sihe at Fudan University about "From Literature to Stage: What Does 'Crocodile' and 'Frog' Bring to the World?" The dialogue began, and less than a minute after the opening of registration, the quota was sold out. In early June, Mo Yan and scholar Chen Xiaoming discussed novels and dramas around "Crocodile" at Peking University, and the two also performed the highlights of "Crocodile", which was crowded at the event.
As a playwright, Mo Yan has come to us.
Mo Yan's new work "Crocodile" was launched by Zhejiang Literature and Art Publishing House "KEY-Can Culture"
In "Crocodile", Shan Wuxian was originally the mayor of a coastal city in China, who fled to the United States in 2004 for corruption and fear, and lived in a villa in the United States with his mistress and cronies. Although he is in the United States, his heart is still at home, and he never forgets his past achievements. In the past ten years, all kinds of people around him have appeared. For ten years, he kept replacing a larger fish tank for a crocodile, allowing the crocodile to grow until it became a four-meter-long behemoth.
The whole story was conceived in 2009, the first draft was completed in February 2022, and Mo Yan revised it in March this year.
"It's a story told in a dramatic way." After reading "Crocodile", writer Cao Wenxuan repeatedly admired Mo Yan's profound ability to tell stories.
Through this infinitely growing, talking crocodile, the story explores the secrets of human nature and delves into the theme of desire. Writer Li Er believes that "Crocodile" writes about the complexity of human nature. "We all have a crocodile inside us, what should we think of this crocodile?"
According to scholar Chen Sihe, the growing crocodile is a symbol, and there is a surreal content here, that is, the imagery of human desire. Today, desire is a driving force for social development and for all kinds of things, and there are powerful places in it, but there are also terrible places in it. "Crocodile" has a clear expression of this.
Mo Yan Visual China infographic
"I made a vow to spend the rest of my life transitioning from novelist to playwright." In 2019, Mo Yan, Yu Hua and Su Tong visited Shakespeare's former house, and in front of the statue of Shakespeare, Mo Yan expressed his ambition to devote himself to drama creation.
Although readers are more familiar with Mo Yan as a novelist, Mo Yan's dialogue drama has always had a deep fascination. His real debut was not a novel, but a script called Divorce. He said: "I was an apprentice in theatre. But I had ambitions to become a playwright. ”
In fact, drama works have always been an integral part of Mo Yan's literary creation that cannot be ignored. Before "Crocodile", Mo Yan had published two collections of plays, "Our Jing Ke" and "Grandma Wearing Red Silk", including "Our Jing Ke" and "Farewell My Concubine", which have been staged more than 100 times at home and abroad. "Our Jing Ke" has won the "Best Play Award" and "Outstanding Screenplay Award" of the "National Drama Culture Award - Drama Golden Lion Award", "The 24th Baltic House Theater Festival - Most Popular Play Award", and "Farewell My Concubine" has been nominated for the "Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival - Best Performance Award". Mo Yan said frankly: "A playwright who sits in the theater and watches his own plays on the stage really enjoy. ”
In addition, Mo Yan also created film and television scripts such as "Heroic Romance" and "Grandma Wears Red Silk", as well as opera scripts such as "Brocade Clothes" and "Sorghum Wine". There is also no lack of drama in Mo Yan's novels: "Frog" ends with a drama, and "Sandalwood Punishment" has distinct opera characteristics. As critic Zhang Qinghua said: "There are probably two main types of modern writers, one is polyphonic, dialogueous and dramatic writers, and the other is narrative, lyrical and subjective writers." Mo Yan clearly belongs to the former. ”
This year, "Crocodile" was accompanied by a "Moyan drama fever": the drama of the same name "Frog" was staged at the Pushkin Theater in Russia, and the drama of the same name "Red Sorghum Family" was also toured across the country. They are all a storyteller, a person who cares about and questions human nature, bringing us the artistic and spiritual world.