385-359Īlthough, as here, Mo Yan beautifully captures the magnificence of the natural world, as well as (elsewhere) the animals that inhabit it, the preceding 358 pages tell a story of trickery, rivalry, violence, and atrocities that show the depths of what human beings are capable of. When the sun comes out, the surface of the sea shimmers, and heaven and earth are painted with extraordinarily rich, extraordinarily majestic colors.' pp.

If the autumn rains are heavy, the fields turn into a swampy sea, the red tips of sorghum rising above the muddy yellow water, appealing stubbornly to the blue sky above. In the deep autumn of the eighth month under a high, magnificently clear sky, the land is covered by sorghum that forms a glittering sea of blood. Here is the review I posted on my reading threads and the book page.Īt the end of this grim book, which jumps back and forth in time but mainly focuses on the period just before and during the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Shandong area (and more) of China, the essentially contemporary narrator, who has barely intruded himself into the story, mourns the loss of the past, as epitomized by the now hybrid sorghum covering the area where his family used to live.Īs I stand amid the dense hybrid sorghum, I think of surpassingly beautiful scenes that will never again appear.

Red sorghum book