num_pages: 117
description: In Change  Mo Yan the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Literature personalizes the political and social changes in his country over the past few decades in this novella disguised as autobiographyor vice-versa. Unlike most historical narratives from China which are pegged to political events Change is a representative of peoples history a bottom-up rather than top-down view of a country in flux. By moving back and forth in time and focusing on small events and everyday people Mo Yan breathes life into history by describing the effects of larger-than-life events on the average citizen.Through a mixture of fantasy and reality historical and social perspectives Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garca Mrquez at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition. Nobel Committee for Literature If China has a Kafka it may be Mo Yan. Like Kafka Yan has the ability to examine his society through a variety of lenses creating fanciful Metamorphosis-like transformations or evoking the numbing bureaucracy and casual cruelty of modern governments.  Publishers Weekly on You'll Do Anything for a Laugh
language: English
title: Change
publisher: Seagull Books