莫言
Following the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Chinese author Mo Yan in 2012, Malmqvist was criticized for a possible conflict of interest, as he had close personal and economic relations to Mo Yan. Malmqvist had translated several of Mo Yan's works into Swedish and published some through his own publishing house. Mo Yan had also written a laudatory preface to one of Malmqvist's own books, and been a close friend of Malmqvist's wife for 15 years. The Nobel committee denied that this constituted a conflict of interest, and said that it would have been absurd for Malmqvist to recuse.