For a country boy, poor as I was, whose constant worry was to be able to have enough to eat, the Army guaranteed one's survival.

Extremely prolific Mo Yan wrote Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out in only 42 days. " He concluded that "For a writer the best way to speak is by writing. Using ridicule and sarcasm Mo Yan attacks history and its falsifications as well as deprivation and political hypocrisy.

news magazine TIME as "one of the most famous oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers" and by Jim Leach as the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller. He has been referred by Donald Morrison of U.