Yu had murdered the husband, and this murder is one of many in a cycle in which brutality and betrayal alternate with love and sacrifice. Commander Yu, a former bandit, had fallen in love with his wife when she was the young bride of the rich son of a distillery owner.

Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present as the narrator moves back and forth recording the war's progress, the fighting between rival Chinese warlords, and the history of his family. Yu sends his 14-year-old son back home to get food for his men but as Yu's wife returns through the sorghum fields with the food, the Japanese start firing and she's killed. The novel opens as a group of villagers led by Commander Yu, the narrator's grandfather, prepare to attack the advancing Japanese. Set in a region where the sorghum is grown, the tale's as much a family history as the story of a particular time and place-a place where the red sorghum, which ``forms a glittering sea of blood and is the traditional spirit of the region,'' is also a metaphor for change and loss. A member of the young ``root-seeking'' writers whose focus is the Chinese countryside, Mo Yan tells the story of three generations-simultaneously ``most heroic and most bastardly''-caught up in these turbulent years. Mo Yan's debut novel (and first US publication) was the basis of a 1988 Oscar-nominated film. A powerful new voice on the brutal unrest of rural China in the late 20's and 30's.

Red sorghum novel