The article states: "Mo Yan promises to step onto the larger stage of literature in the twenty-first century as a world-class author. Emerging at a time in the mid-1980s when young Chinese writers, painters, and filmmakers began to look beyond political ideology for theme and subject matter, when the forces of modernism began to reach Chinese intellectuals through translations of foreign literature, and when the movement to ''seek cultural roots'' gained momentum, Mo Yan has created a singular and compelling fictional voice that benefits from all these developments but owes allegiance only to its own esthetic principles." Makes multiple references to the works of Gabriel García Márquez.