Though this is the first of Mo Yan' s novels to be translated into English, many Americans know his work from the film Red Sorghum , winner of the Silver Bear at the 1988 Berlin Film Festival. The four-chapter novel...Подробнее
Though this is the first of Mo Yan' s novels to be translated into English, many Americans know his work from the film Red Sorghum , winner of the Silver Bear at the 1988 Berlin Film Festival. The four-chapter novel spans 40 years in rural China through flashbacks and foreshadowing, beginning with the Japanese invasion in the 1930s. Sorghum, used as food and as an ingredient of a potent wine, had been the focus and metaphor of peasant life during peacetime. In wartime, it becomes intertwined with the struggle for life. Death pervades this novel--death brutally dealt by Japanese troops, by factions within China, by crazed dog packs; death from suicide, starvation, and freezing. The strength and love of the narrator' s grandmother and her lover insure the continuation of their line against all odds. But they cannot prevent the later introduction of a hybrid sorghum into their village that lacks the & quot; soul and bearing& quot; of prerevolution sorghum. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
