More Mo Yan: Malmqvist defends Mo

       A defensive Göran Malmqvist -- Sweidsh Academy member, Chinese speaker, and, suddenly, Mo Yan translator ... -- happens to find himself in China shortly after the Nobel announcement, and has been defending the selection -- while also making the argument that, as reported by Liu Xiaolin in the Shanghai Daily, More of China's literature needs translation. (Amen to that !)
       So, for example:

"Mo Yan is an excellent storyteller. Among today's Chinese writers, no one equals him in the courage to talk about the darkness and unjustness" in Chinese society, he said.

       Which doesn't seem like a great lead-argument, given that even I can name some more critical authors .....
       Interesting also to hear that::

He personally prefers Mo's short fiction to longer work, saying the writer "has an excellent control of words."

       (Interesting, of course, since it appears to be the short fiction he translated .....)
       Also interesting:

According to Malmqvist, Mo's works have been translated into the greatest number of foreign languages among the current Chinese writers.

       Sounds plausible, too. (Like I've said for a couple of years: among Chinese Nobel-choices, he was the most obvious -- including because he's one of the (or, apparently, the) most widely translated.)