New Nobel laureate Mo Yan has explained that the drive for his writing career comes from the strong impulse he feels to tell the stories looming in his mind.

Mo, also dean of literature at the Chinese National Academy of Arts, made the remarks at a symposium hosted by the academy to celebrate his prize.

The Nobel Prize, Mo said, was something he never expected, but his experience after winning the award allowed the author to gain greater understanding of himself.

Liu Mengxi, director of the academy's cultural studies institution, said at the symposium that Mo's works have presented the sufferings of Chinese in a powerful way.

Yu Qiuyu, a celebrated culture critic, added Mo's works are about the noumena of lives, lives possessing the collective genes of Chinese.

The Swedish Academy announced in Stockholm on Oct. 11 that Mo would receive the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the first Chinese national to win the award.

In Mo's works, "hallucinatory realism merges with folk tales, history and the contemporary," according to the official Noble citation.

"Through a mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of William Faulkner and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, at the same time finding a departure point in old Chinese literature and in oral tradition," said a biographical note posted on Nobelprize.org.

Find out more about Mo Yan: Special: Mo Yan