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茅盾文学奖
China · Since 1982 · For books in Chinese
Awarded every four years by the China Writers Association to several novels of at least 130,000 characters by Chinese writers, published in mainland China in the period under review. The year is the year an edition was announced. The nominees are the final-round list: about 25 books in 2005 and 2008, ten from 2011; the 2000 edition published winners only.
The novelist Mao Dun left 250,000 yuan of his royalties to the Chinese Writers Association in 1981 to reward the best novels, and the prize named after him was first awarded in 1982. It is open to novels of at least 130,000 characters by Chinese citizens, published in mainland China during the period under review. A jury appointed by the association votes in several rounds, and a book needs two thirds of the votes to win, so each edition has between three and five winners. The prize was first given every three years and later every four. Before the final vote the list of nominated finalists is made public so that readers can send their views to the jury, and since 2011 the jurors' votes have been published under their names.
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Mao Dun 2023 · Winner
回响 · Huixiang
Dong Xi · 55 when first published
Novel · 384 pages · Crime, Love
AI-generated summary:While investigating a murder, police detective Ran Dongdong discovers that her husband has secretly booked hotel rooms, and she begins to probe her marriage as closely as the case.
Mao Dun 2019 · Winner
牵风记 · Qian feng ji
Xu Huaizhong · 89 when first published
Novel · 296 pages · War, Love, Historical
AI-generated summary:In 1947, as a Communist army drives south into the Dabie Mountains, a young woman who plays the guqin joins a regiment as its culture teacher, drawing the attention of its educated commander.
Mao Dun 2019 · Nominee
捎话 · Shaohua
Liu Liangcheng · 56 when first published
Novel · 340 pages · War, Speculative
AI-generated summary:During a decades-long war between two ancient desert kingdoms, a translator who smuggles messages across the front is hired to deliver a young she-donkey as if she too were a message.
Mao Dun 2015 · Winner
黄雀记 · Huangque ji
Su Tong · 50 when first published
Novel · 484 pages · Crime, Coming of age
AI-generated summary:On a small-town street in southern China, a teenage boy who keeps his half-mad grandfather in check with rope is drawn into a fateful entanglement with a proud orphan girl and a butcher's son.
Mao Dun 2011 · Winner
天行者 · Tianxingzhe
Liu Xinglong · 53 when first published
Novel · 376 pages
AI-generated summary:Zhang Yingcai, who failed the university entrance exam, is sent by his uncle to teach at Jieling, a poor school deep in the mountains, alongside three community teachers who have waited for years to be made state employees.
Mao Dun 2011 · Winner
一句顶一万句 · Yi ju ding yiwan ju
Liu Zhenyun · 51 when first published
Novel · 392 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:Yang Baishun, a tofu seller's son in Yanjin, Henan, drifts from trade to trade and name to name looking for someone he can really talk to. Seventy years later the son of his lost foster daughter sets out on the same search.
Mao Dun 2011 · Winner
蛙 · Wa
Mo Yan · 54 when first published
Novel · 400 pages · Family, Politics, Historical
AI-generated summary:The playwright Tadpole writes letters to a Japanese writer about his aunt, the village doctor of Northeast Gaomi who has delivered thousands of babies, and who becomes the enforcer of China's birth-control policy.
Mao Dun 2011 · Nominee
农民帝国 · Nongmin diguo
Jiang Zilong · 67 when first published
Novel · 712 pages · Politics
AI-generated summary:Guo Cunxian, a good, hard-working farmer, leads his village of Guojiadian out of poverty during thirty years of reform, but money, desire and power begin to change him.
Mao Dun 2008 · Winner
额尔古纳河右岸 · E'erguna He you'an
Chi Zijian · 41 when first published
Novel · 311 pages · Nature, Historical
AI-generated summary:The last chieftain's wife of a band of Evenki reindeer herders on the Chinese bank of the Argun River, now about ninety, tells the story of her people over a century.
Mao Dun 2008 · Winner
秦腔 · Qinqiang
Jia Pingwa · 53 when first published
Novel · 699 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:In Qingfeng Street, a village in southern Shaanxi, the madman Yinsheng watches two decades of change as the old Bai clan fades and the fortunes of the Xia family come to stand for those of the Chinese countryside.
Mao Dun 2008 · Winner
暗算 · Ansuan
Mai Jia · 39 when first published
Novel · 400 pages
AI-generated summary:In a secret unit, people with extraordinary gifts listen for sounds from beyond and read books without words, struggling to break codes, and to make sense of their own lives.
Mao Dun 2008 · Winner
湖光山色 · Hu guang shan se
Zhou Daxin · 54 when first published
Novel · 390 pages · Love, Family
AI-generated summary:Back from working in Beijing, Chu Nuannuan turns down the village head's brother and marries Kuang Kaitian, a poor young man of Chuwang village. Saddled with debts, the couple see a way out when an archaeologist takes an interest in the ancient Chu wall nearby.
Mao Dun 2008 · Nominee
四十一炮 · Sishiyi pao
Mo Yan · 48 when first published
Novel · 386 pages
AI-generated summary:In a village during the rural reforms of the 1990s, two half-real, half-dreamed stories intertwine, in which human nature collides with greed, morality with money, faith with power and the village with the city.
Mao Dun 2008 · Nominee
我的丁一之旅 · Wo de Ding Yi zhi lü
Shi Tiesheng · 55 when first published
Novel · 320 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:The story of Ding Yi, interwoven with the stories of his uncle, of Yi, of E, of Qin Han and others, follows the elusive paths of desire and love through different people, ages and times.
Mao Dun 2008 · Nominee
英格力士 · Yinggelishi
Wang Gang · 44 when first published
Novel · 313 pages · Coming of age
AI-generated summary:In Urumqi, in years of material and spiritual want, the boy Liu Ai falls under the spell of his gentle, elegant English teacher and dreams of owning a thick English dictionary and speaking perfect English.
Mao Dun 2008 · Nominee
藏獒 · Zang'ao
Novel · 476 pages · Nature
AI-generated summary:In the early years of the People's Republic, a mastiff from Shang Ama becomes leader of the dogs of the Xijiegu grasslands and settles a feud between two Tibetan tribes.
Mao Dun 2005 · Winner
东藏记 · Dong cang ji
Zong Pu · 73 when first published
Novel · 478 pages · War, Family, Historical · Ye hulu yin, book 2
AI-generated summary:During the war with Japan, the history professor Meng Yue, his wife Lü Bichu, their daughters and the colleagues and friends around them, scholars who have fled south from Beijing, try to carry on with their lives, loves and work.
Mao Dun 2005 · Nominee
花腔 · Huaqiang
Li Er · 36 when first published
Novel · 306 pages · Historical, Politics
AI-generated summary:A search for the truth about Ge Ren, a revolutionary whose death is a mystery, pieces together his short life, his politics and his loves from witnesses who each tell the story in their own voice.
Mao Dun 2005 · Nominee
檀香刑 · Tanxiang xing
Mo Yan · 46 when first published
Novel · 420 pages · Historical
AI-generated summary:Around 1900, as Germans build a railway across Shandong, the opera singer Sun Bing leads the villagers against them. He is sentenced to the slow sandalwood death, and the executioner is Zhao Jia, father of his daughter's husband.
Mao Dun 2005 · Nominee
大浴女 · Da yu nü
Tie Ning · 43 when first published
Novel · 361 pages · Family, Coming of age, Love
AI-generated summary:Yin Xiaotiao grows up under the weight of her mother's affair and her little sister's accidental death, estranged from her mother, at odds with her other sister Xiaofan and in love with Fang Jing, a man who only takes.
Mao Dun 2005 · Nominee
大漠祭 · Damo ji
Novel · 486 pages · Family
AI-generated summary:On the edge of the Tengger Desert in western China, the farmer Lao Shun and his family struggle to stay alive, held back by old ideas and poverty and held together by a meagre love.
Mao Dun 2000 · Winner
尘埃落定 · Chen'ai luoding
Alai · 39 when first published
Novel · 433 pages · Historical, Family
AI-generated summary:Among the Tibetan chieftains of western Sichuan, the powerful Maiqi chieftain fathers a son with his Han Chinese wife while drunk. Everyone takes the boy for a fool, yet he has an uncanny sense of what is coming.
Mao Dun 2000 · Winner
长恨歌 · Changhen ge
Wang Anyi · 42 when first published
Novel · 456 pages · Love
AI-generated summary:In the 1940s Wang Qiyao, a schoolgirl from a Shanghai lane house, is chosen as a Miss Shanghai and becomes the kept mistress of a powerful official. After 1949 she lives on as an ordinary city dweller, while her heart is never at rest.
Mao Dun 2000 · Winner
茶人三部曲 · Charen sanbuqu
Novel · 661 pages · Family, Historical, War
AI-generated summary:In Hangzhou, the capital of green tea, four generations of the Hang family, owners of the Wangyou tea house, live through the fall of the Qing, the Republic and the war with Japan, their fortunes rising and falling with those of Chinese tea.
Mao Dun 2000 · Winner
抉择 · Jueze
Novel · 608 pages · Politics, Crime
AI-generated summary:When thousands of workers at a failing state textile mill threaten to march on the provincial government, Li Gaocheng, the honest mayor of Zhongyang, looks into the mill himself and finds the corruption reaching his old colleagues, his patron and his own wife.