Chinese Writer Mo Yan Wins Nobel Literature Prize Chinese writer Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday, a cause of pride for a government that had disowned the only previous Chinese winner of the award, an exiled critic. National television broke into its newscast to announce the prize - exceptional for the tightly scripted broadcast that usually focuses on the doings of Chinese leaders. The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, praised Mo's "hallucinatory realism" saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." Peter Englund, the academy's permanent secretary, said the academy had contacted Mo, 57,before the announcement. "He said he was overjoyed and scared," Englund said. Among the works highlighted by the Nobel judges were "Red Sorghum, (1993), "The Garlic Ballads" (1995), "Big Breasts & Wide Hips (2004). "He's written 11 novels and let's say a hundred short stories," Englund said. If you want to start off to get a sense of how he is writing and also get a sense of the moral core in what he is writing I would recommend 'The Garlic Ballads.' Chinese social media exploded with pride after the announcement, while Mo's publisher called it a dream come true but said that Mo always played down the importance of prizes. Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy, arrives to announce that Chinese writer Mo Yan has been named the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature, Thursday Oct. 11, 2012 in Stockholm. The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, in Thursday praised Mo's "hallucinatoric realism" saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary." As with the other Nobel Prizes, the prize is worth 8 million kronor, or about $1.2 million. (AP Photo/Fredrik Sandberg) SWEDEN OUT Close "For me personally it's the realization of a dream I've had for years finally coming true, it's suddenly a reality, but what I mainly want to say is congratulations to Mo Yan," said Cao Yuanyong, deputy editor-in-chief of Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, which has published much of Mo's work. Cao said he and a dozen colleagues were toasting Mo with red wine in a Shanghai restaurant Thursday night. Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the state-run nationalistic Global Times tabloid, said on a Chinese version of Twitter that Mo's winning is proof that the West has looked beyond Chinese dissidents. This prize may prove China, with its growing strength, does not have only dissidents who can be accepted by the West. China's mainstream cannot be kept out for long," Hu wrote on his microblog. The reception of the award in China contrasted with the reactions when jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, which infuriated the Chinese leadership. The communist leadership also disowned the Nobel when Gao Xingjian won the literature award in 2000 for his absurdist dramas and inventive fiction. Gao's works are laced with criticisms of China's communist government and have been banned in China. Born Guan Moye in 1955 to a farming family in eastern Shandong province, Mo chose his penname while writing his first novel. Garrulous by nature, Mo has said the name, meaning "don't speak," was intended to remind him to hold his tongue lest he get himself into trouble and to mask his identity since he began writing while serving in the army. His breakthrough came with novel 'Red Sorghum' published in 1987. Set in a small village, like much of his fiction, 'Red Sorghum' is an earthy tale of love and peasant struggles set against the backdrop of the anti-Japanese war. It was turned into a film that won the top prize at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1988, marked the directing debut of Zhang Yimou and boosted Mo's popularity.