Among Mo Yan's many works, "Frog" is undoubtedly the lucky one. In 2011, it won the 8th Mao Dun Literature Award, the highest achievement award in Chinese literature, and in the same year, Mo Yan was elected as the vice chairman of the Writers Association, with fame and fortune.
In 2012, Mo Yan returned the Nobel Prize in Literature, which Chinese writers dreamed of with "Frog", which can be described as unlimited scenery.
"Frog" became famous and won the "Frog Sound", which was not only sought after in China, but also released in foreign languages. In November 2014, the English version translated by Ge Haowen, the "royal translator" who translated "Fat Buttocks" and "Life and Death Fatigue", was published in the United Kingdom.
In January 2015, the American version of Frog was also published.
Interestingly, "Frog" won the Foreign Language Award two years before the publication and release of "Frog" in foreign languages!
And Frog soon "fell silent".
In the 2018 "40 Most Influential Novels in the 40 Years of Reform and Opening Up" held by the "Novel Selection" magazine of the China Writers Association, Mo Yan's "Red Sorghum Family" and "Life and Death Fatigue" were among them, and "Frog" was dull.
People inevitably have to ask, didn't "Frog" win the "Mao Dun Prize literary award"? Isn't the Mao Dun Literature Prize the highest prize for Chinese literature? In fact, the works that won the Mao Dun Literature Award are not represented by the authors.
Like Mo Yan, Liu Zhenyun, who won the Mao Dun Literature Award in the same year, said that "Tuina" did not enter the list. Zhang Wei's 4.5 million-word "You are in the plateau" won the first place in the same Mao Dun Literature Award, but lost to "Ancient Ships" created in 1986.
Why is this happening? After the selection of the 8th Mao Dun Literature Award, Dou Wentao invited Wang Meng, former Minister of Culture and Honorary Chairman of the Writers Association, and Xu Zidong, Professor of the Department of Chinese of Lingnan University in Hong Kong, to talk about the evaluation of the "Mao Dun Literature Award" as a guest.
As an outsider, I learned after listening to it that the Mao Dun Literature Award was "so".
For example, as Dou Wentao said, Chinese novels are "snubbed in front of the door", which is in stark contrast to today's novel creation.
Wang Meng said many "insiders", which is surprising: Zhang Wei's award is an acknowledgement of the outstanding writers of the Zhiqing era. Zhang Wei's "Ancient Ships" failed to win awards for various reasons. The judges of "You are in the Plateau" must not have finished reading, and the Mao Dun Literature Award "looks good about Zhang Wei". Implicitly, this award is considered to be compensation for Zhang Wei's "Ancient Ships" that did not win the award.
Mention the reason for Mo Yan's "Frog" award: Mo Yan many foreigners are optimistic about him, the most translated, and various versions are available. He said that he had done statistics, and Chinese writers translated abroad mo yan first, and he Wang Meng second.
Does this mean that the Mao Dun Literature Award should look at the faces of foreigners?
Xu Zidong said unceremoniously that the snubbing of the Mao Dun Literature Prize shows that "literature has been marginalized." He also criticized the judges for giving awards without reading the works, and the publishing house for "raising the best and not avoiding relatives".
From this point of view, the national Mao Dun Literature Award has been "played badly", and "the game within the Writers Association" is not empty.
In this way, the silence of "Frog", which won the Mao Dun Literature Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature, is understandable. The Writers Association was optimistic about Mo Yan's overseas influence, and "Frog" was published just before the 8th Mao Dun Literature Award. The judges of the Nobel Prize in Literature do not need to look at the works, and Ma Yueran let the judges watch not "Frog". Because the foreign language edition of Frog was not published until two years later. "Frog" only "took" two awards.
Mo Yan also did not cherish this "Frog" that brought him infinite glory. In the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, only mentioned that "in my latest novel ,Frog," the image of my aunt appeared. "My aunt was indeed my model when I wrote Frog. But the aunt in the novel is very different from the aunt in real life. "There is no commentary on The Frog itself.
Mo Yan himself believes that the representative work is "Fat Buttocks". He said that the reader could not read all his works, but could not fail to read Fat Buttocks; On the title page of the novel is written "Spirit in Heaven dedicated to mother"; He enshrined "Fat Buttocks" as "the Bible of Gaomi Northeast Township".
"Life and Death Fatigue" Mo Yan is also very fond of writing about a wrongfully killed landlord who has gone through six reincarnations, becoming a donkey, a cow, a pig, a dog, a monkey, and finally reborn as a big baby with a congenital incurable disease. Mo Yan said that the novel is a tribute to Pu Songling. The judges of the Nobel Prize in Literature mainly read "Life and Death Fatigue" before giving him this award.
"Red Sorghum Family" is a pioneering work called a "new historicist" novel by Professor Zhang Qinghua of Beijing Normal University, and the film "Red Sorghum", which was adapted from it, won the Golden Bear Award at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival in 1988, and achieved Zhang Yimou, Gong Li, and Mo Yan.
Therefore, the popular "Frog" eventually degenerated into a loneliness that the grandmother did not hurt, the uncle did not love, and the mother did not want to see.