When Chinese novelist Mo Yan accepted the Nobel Prize in Literature earlier this week, the relationship between literature and politics attracted much attention. The award is often given to writers who forcefully oppose political repression. When authors are from countries recently embroiled in political strife, or there are repressive dictatorships or socialist regimes involved, sometimes the artistic aspects of an author’s work receive less attention than they would for more famous authors. Even authors from stable, economically advanced countries are sometimes honored by the Prize as much for representing a new, repressed, or marginalized voice as for their literary achievements, leading many observers to conclude that the Nobel Literature Prize is “political.” It is very rare for the prize to be given to a citizen of a Communist country in good standing with his government; I believe Mo Yan is only the second, after the Soviet novelist Mikhail Sholokhov in 1965.