Numerous local militias have sprung up, each contending with the others for dominance while at the same time trying to fight off the Japanese invaders. The only justice is dispensed by itinerant magistrates. Highwaymen and bandits lurk by every road and in the sorghum fields. With no organized central government, every village has been left to fend for itself. The portrait that emerges is of a society living on the precipice of anarchy. Intercut with this tale is the turbulent love story of the narrator's grandparents and their takeover of the Shan family winery. Moving backward and forward in time, the saga begins on an autumn day in 1939 as the narrator's grandfather, Yu Zhan'ao, prepares to lead an ambush against the Japanese near Northeast Gaomi Township, in Shandong Province. Two of the stories - "Red Sorghum" and "Sorghum Wine" - formed the basis of Zhang Yimou's acclaimed first film.īut where the film "Red Sorghum" focused only on the broad outline of the stories, Mo Yan's narrative is rich in vivid detail, taking in three generations of a Chinese family. Mo Yan, a Chinese writer largely unknown outside the circles of Beijing's literati, achieves both in "Red Sorghum," a collection of five novellas known as the author's Sorghum series, being published here as a full novel in a vibrant translation by Howard Goldblatt. But when it succeeds, the result can illuminate a time and place as it excites the imagination. THE canvas of history rarely stretches comfortably over the frame of fiction.
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