Chinese writer Mo Yan has been awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize in literature, according to Permanent Secretary of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm Peter Englund.

Mo Yan is an alias for 57-year-old writer My Guan, whose works have been translated into dozens of languages and "who, with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary," according to Englund.

Outside China, the writer is best known for his 1987 novel Red Sorghum, on which an eponymous movie is based.

The Nobel Prize comes with a cash award of $1.2 million.

The award ceremony will take place on December 10 in Stockholm.