Nobel Literature winner switches off phone

Chinese author Mo Yan, the new Nobel Literature Prize winner, may have switched off his phone as callers are not getting through to him.

Agency reports said the laureate born in 1955, may be fed up with media attention and will likely take some time before coming out with a detailed response to his Nobel literature award, a US associate of the writer said Thursday.

The Chinese author is “going to sit down and take his time deciding what he will want to say”, said Eric Abrahamsen, who runs the China Publishing Industry Newsletter and who has been in regular contact with Mo Yan until recently.

“He won’t do anything spontaneous. I think he is quite sick of the media and wants to be left alone,” said Abrahamsen, who like other associates believes that Mo Yan may have gone to ground in his home in eastern Shandong province.

“I doubt that I or other people will be able to get hold of him anytime soon,” added Abrahamsen, an American who has served as Mo Yan’s interpreter at international literary gatherings on several occasions.

The Nobel Academy’s permanent secretary, Peter Englund, said the organisation had spoken to Mo Yan by telephone and the author was “overjoyed and terrified” at the award.

However Mo Yan’s cellphone appears to have been switched off this week, as Nobel speculation heated up, and AFP was unable to reach him late Thursday.

The Swedish Academy said he had won the award for writing that mixes folk tales, history and the contemporary.

The Nobel awards are a sensitive issue in China since jailed dissident writer Liu Xiaobo won the Peace Prize in 2010 for his advocacy of democratic change in the country.

China lashed out, refusing to let Liu attend the award ceremony in Oslo, vilifying the Norwegian committee that chooses the awards as “clowns” and punishing Norway’s government with diplomatic retaliation.