A contemplative semiautobiographical picture book by Nobel Laureate Mo Yan and illustrated by Hans Christian Anderson Award nominee Zhu Chengliang.
Yan Mo Book order
This Nobel laureate is celebrated for his hallucinatory realism, which masterfully merges folk tales, history, and the contemporary. His work often draws comparisons to Kafka or Heller, marked by a distinctive ability to weave epic themes with intimate human experiences. The author's prose is rich and layered, offering readers a profound immersion into Chinese culture and history through compelling narratives.







- 2024
- 2023
"This English-language debut from the award-winning Chinese author contains nine short stories in her trademark wit and style based around everyday people facing the challenges of loneliness, emotional and physical displacement and longing."--
- 2021
Mo Yan, a Nobel Laureate, is celebrated for his unique storytelling that blends folk tales, historical elements, and contemporary issues through a lens of hallucinatory realism. His notable works, translated into English by Professor Howard Goldblatt, include titles like The Garlic Ballads and Red Sorghum. His writing often reflects deep cultural insights and explores complex themes, making him a significant figure in modern literature.
- 2021
I Name Him Me: Selected Poems of Ma Yan
- 160 pages
- 6 hours of reading
Poetry. Translated by Stephen Nashef. The poetry of Ma Yan, born in 1979 in Sichuan province, has garnered increasing attention in China since her untimely death in 2010. She stands out as a poet who is simultaneously playful and fearless in her explorations of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, writing intimate yet arresting poetry of great emotional breadth. Her work delves into questions of gender, mental health, death, desire, physicality and our personal interactions to show how they all shape the raw experience of existence. I NAME HIM ME is the first collection of her poetry to appear in English.
- 2020
In the fictional Chinese city of Yong'an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness--save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks. Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.
- 2018
The Chilli Bean Paste Clan
- 278 pages
- 10 hours of reading
Set in a fictional town in West China, this is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the lucrative chilli bean paste factory, and their formidable matriarch. As Gran's eightieth birthday approaches, her middle-aged children get together to make preparations. Family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed vigour. As Shengqiang struggles unsuccessfully to juggle the demands of his mistress and his wife, the biggest surprises of all come from Gran herself...... (Winner of English Pen Award)
- 2015
Frog. Frösche, englische Ausgabe
- 400 pages
- 14 hours of reading
The author of Red Sorghum and China's most revered and controversial novelist returns with his first major publication since winning the Nobel Prize In 2012, the Nobel committee confirmed Mo Yan's position as one of the greatest and most important writers of our time. In his much-anticipated new novel, Mo Yan chronicles the sweeping history of modern China through the lens of the nation's controversial one- child policy. "Frog "opens with a playwright nicknamed Tadpole who plans to write about his aunt. In her youth, Gugu--the beautiful daughter of a famous doctor and staunch Communist--is revered for her skill as a midwife. But when her lover defects, Gugu's own loyalty to the Party is questioned. She decides to prove her allegiance by strictly enforcing the one-child policy, keeping tabs on the number of children in the village, and performing abortions on women as many as eight months pregnant. In sharply personal prose, Mo Yan depicts a world of desperate families, illegal surrogates, forced abortions, and the guilt of those who must enforce the policy. At once illuminating and devastating, it shines a light into the heart of communist China.
- 2015
Radish
- 96 pages
- 4 hours of reading
During China's collectivist era in the late 1950s, a rural work team responsible for building an important floodgate receives a strange new recruit: Hei-hai, a skinny, silent and almost feral boy. Assigned to assist the blacksmith at the worksite forge, Hei-hai proves superhumanly indifferent to pain or suffering and yet, eerily sensitive to the natural world. As the worksite becomes a backdrop to jealousy and strife, Hei-hai's eyes remain fixed on a world that only he can see, searching for wonders that only he understands. One day, he finds all that he has been seeking embodied in the most mundane and unexpected way: a radish.
- 2014
In Frog, Mo Yan turns his attention to the subject of China's one-child policy. A celebrated midwife, skilled at delivering babies in difficult rural circumstances, finds herself at the blunt end of enforcement of the country's controversial one-child policy. Through a complex family story told through letters and narrative forms, Mo explores the emotional and moral toll of state-controlled family planning on a traditional community that places a high value on a large family.
- 2012
The Republic of Wine. Die Schnapsstadt, englische Ausgabe
- 355 pages
- 13 hours of reading
Plagued by persistent reports of cannibalism in a province known as the Republic of Wine, the Chinese government sends a special investigator to substantiate the disturbing rumors.

