Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) is the first Japanese to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Kawabata made a debut in 1927 with his short story Izu no odoriko (Izu Dancer), which became one of his representative works in his earlier career. With…
In the Nobel Prize Memorial Lecture, in his speech titled “Aimai na Nihon no watakushi” (Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself)," while referring to Kawabata Yasunari’s 1968 memorial lecture, Ōe Kenzaburō (1935-) described the tradition of the post-war…
Mo Yan, was born in 1955 in Gaomi Township in Shandong Province, a rural area that is the setting for much of his fiction. Mo Yan ("don't speak") is a pseudonym for Guan Moye on the advice of his parents as a school-age boy during the Mao era. The…
Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1940 in Jiangxi province in eastern China, and has lived in France since 1987. Gao Xingjian is that rare artist who excels as novelist, playwright, essayist,…