Category: Middle Grade Fiction
Publication: August 2011 (First Edition)
Word Count: 138,000 words
Red Sorghum is a work by the famous contemporary Chinese writer Mo Yan. Red Sorghum" is a story about a hymn to life in Shandong province, told through the stories of Dai Fenglian, "my grandmother", and Yu Zhanyao, "my grandfather". The main story of "Red Sorghum" is the armed forces led by "Grandpa" Yu Zhanao to suppress the Japanese army, and the secondary story is the love story between "Grandpa" Yu Zhanao and "My Grandma" Dai Fenglian. The main place where the story takes place is the northeast township of Gaomi. The main characters in the novel are either spontaneous rebel forces or chaotic and undisciplined local leaders. They have no active consciousness of saving the country and the masses. The reason for their revolt comes from fighting for their own survival. In the whole novel, there are not too many positive images, but the character of "My Grandfather" is portrayed as a double identity of "bandit" and "anti-Japanese hero", and the wildness of bandit and the blood of hero make the character more rich. The wildness of the bandits and the blood of the heroes make the character more full and real, restoring the real history of the scene.
In the novel, Mo Yan did his best to sculpt almost all the war scenes, no matter how big or small they were, and even the battle between human beings and wild dogs devouring corpses, he used a lot of strokes to show a bloody picture with corpses everywhere and flesh and blood flying all over the place. In the midst of all this blood and flesh, Mo Yan depicts a red sorghum as red as blood, and the whole world is blood red. It is with this kind of ecstatic language and wild strokes that Mo Yan shapes a world of red sorghum on the verge of ethics and morality, a kind of bandit heroes, who do all kinds of bad things but also serve the country, who love each other lovingly and fight bravely, full of a rebellious and infinite vitality of the times.
Red Sorghum is a classic work that expresses the resilience of the Gaomi people in the war against Japan and is full of blood and national spirit.