It's that time again...

                   
                   
                

The name has been revealed.

In amongst all the political upheaval over the EU getting the Nobel Peace Prize, the recipient for literature has been rather overlooked. Not that Mo Yan is a household name...yet. The first Chinese citizen to receive the award in its 111 year history, Yan is very much a product of the education of life having left school at 12 to work in the fields and subsequently serve in the army.

Indeed, praised for merging 'folk tales, history and the contemporary' with 'hallucinatory realism', Yan's best known books Jiuguo (The Republic of Wine), Shengsi pilao (Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out) and Tanxiangxing(Sandalwood Death) are embedded in culture and experience.

It is still in this humble attitude that the 'overjoyed and scared' author will receive his Nobel Prize for Literature in a lavish awards ceremony on December 10th.