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Mo's works are among the best when it comes to Chinese contemporary literature, He said, adding the award is significant for the development of Chinese literature and will boost confidence in the country's cultural creativity.

Mo Yan, a pseudonym for Guan Moye, was born in 1955 and grew up in Gaomi in east China's Shandong Province.

Mo is one of the most widely translated Chinese writers. His best-known works are "Red Sorghum," which was made into a film by director Zhang Yimou.

According to the official Nobel citation, Mo's body of works "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary."

A press release published on Nobelprize.org said "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 Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition."

Editor: Shi Liwei