Chinese writer Mo Yan, whose real name is Guan Moye, won the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 11, a somewhat unexpected choice by a prize committee that has favored European authors in recent years.

The 57-year-old writer, a native of Gaomi in east China's Shandong Province, has used his hometown as the backdrop of many of his novels. His breakthrough came with the novel Red Sorghum, published in 1987. Other masterpieces include Big Breasts and Wide Hips , Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out , Frog , Pow, Shifu, You'll Do Anything for a Laugh, and The Republic of Wine .

The Swedish Academy, which selects the winners of the prestigious award, praised Mo's "hallucinatoric realism," saying it "merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."