Yang Mo

Yang Mo (1914 to 1995), born Yang Chengye in Beijing, was a Chinese novelist who also wrote under the pen names Yang Junmo and Xiao Hui. She fled home in 1931 to escape an arranged marriage, joined the Communist Party in 1936, and worked in propaganda and women's organizations in Hebei Province during the war against Japan. After the war she turned to full time writing. Her best known book is the novel The Song of Youth (1958), a semi autobiographical story of the student movement that was adapted as a film in 1959, reprinted many times with sales above five million copies and translated into nearly twenty languages. Later books include Song of Fragrance (1986) and Song of Heroism (1990).