Mo Yan: Chronicler of a turbulent Chinese century

BEIJING (AFP) - Mo Yan has focused an unflinching eye on what he calls the darkness and ugliness of 20th-century Chinese society in a prolific writing career that on Thursday landed him the 2012 Nobel prize for literature.

Mo Yan, one of China's leading writers of the past half-century, became the first Chinese national and just the second Chinese-language writer to be awarded the coveted prize.

The 57-year-old, whose real name is Guan Moye, is perhaps best-known abroad for his 1987 novella Red Sorghum, a tale of the brutal violence that plagued the eastern China countryside - where he grew up - during the 1920s and 30s.

The story was later made into an acclaimed film by leading Chinese director Zhang Yimou.