Nobel literature laureate Mo Yan, one of the most popular and prolific authors in China, is possibly still best known overseas for his 1987 novel Red Sorghum, and even then mostly for the lavish film of the book which launched the careers of director Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li.

Nobel winners may subsequently see their even their marginalia reach publication in multiple languages, and their shopping lists become the subject of academic theses. But while Frog first appeared in Chinese three years before Mr. Mo’s 2012 win, its recent arrival in English is no mere exploitation of prize-enhanced international marketability. The novel is a full-length major work with big ideas, and it deals with a highly sensitive topic.

Mo Yan (“no words” or “don’t speak”) is the pen name of Guan Moye, and Frog is set in his favourite location, a fictionalised version of his birthplace in rural Shandong Province. The narrator’s Aunt Gugu, politically perfect daughter of a communist doctor who died in World War Two, trains as her area's first modern midwife, earns respect and admiration for her no-nonsense delivery skills, and is glamorously affianced to a fighter pilot.

He defects to Taiwan, taking his plane and all her political capital with him and as a result she suffers persecution and physical abuse during the Cultural Revolution for her inadvertent connection with the Communist Party’s enemies. Yet her faith in the Party never wavers. She becomes a tough enforcer of its authority, and in particular of its one child policy.

China’s successful modern literature is rarely short on blood, bile, and sudden death, featuring the whiff of the public toilet, the blare of the truck horn, and the brilliance of blood in the gutter after unexpected violence. Mo Yan also gives the reader no quarter. Young mothers die undergoing last-minute abortions at Gugu’s hands, serial fathers are rounded up for compulsory vasectomies, and the neighbours of recalcitrant repeat parents are threatened with the destruction of their property unless they join in persuading heavily pregnant women out of hiding.

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But as critics both inside and outside China point out, Mr. Mo is now much closer to the government. He holds the post of Vice President of the officially approved Chinese Writers Association and has spoken out publicly in favour of censorship. In 2012 he contributed his own calligraphy to a commemorative edition of Mao’s 1942 Yan’an Talks on Literature and Art, which promoted the Leninist line that authors should write in the language of the working class and solely to promote the aims of the revolution. There are few documents more reviled by Chinese artists, especially at a time when current President Xi Jinping is reviving the same approach.

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The book is no easy read. But regardless of his politics, admirers of Mr. Mo’s earlier literary offspring are likely to be equally joyful he brought this one to term.