Publisher Description

A beautiful and unforgettable classic set in 1930s rural China from the Nobel Prize-winning authorSpanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty as the Chinese battle both the Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.As the novel opens, a group of villagers, led by Commander Yu, the narrator's grandfather, prepare to attack the advancing Japanese. 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 is killed.Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present and the narrator moves back and forth recording the war's progress, the fighting between the Chinese warlords and his family's history.

Notes

A mixture of history and fable set in China. "Brilliant, lyrical and intoxicating" San Francisco Chronicle.

Author Biography

Mo Yan was born in 1956 in Shandong, northeastern China. The author of over forty short stories and five novels, he is the most critically acclaimed Chinese writer of his generation, in both China and the West. The critically acclaimed film version of the novel, Red Sorghum, won first prize in the Golden Bear Awards at the Berlin Film Festival in 1988.He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2012.

Review

Mo Yan deserves a place in world literature. His voice will find its way into the heart of the reader, just as Kundera and Garcia Marquez have. -- Amy Tan
His idiom has the spiralling invention and mytho-maniacal quality of much world literature of a high order, from Vargas Llosa to Rushdie. * Observer *
Brilliant, lyrical and intoxicating. * San Francisco Chronicle *
One of China's leading writers... Mo Yan stands out in China's literary scene. His work rings with refreshing authenticity. * Time *
A real heir to Lu Xun, a fine Chinese writer deeply concerned with the gate of his fellow men. * Times Literary Supplement *

Promotional

A beautiful and unforgettable classic set in 1930s rural China from the 2012 Nobel Prize-winning author

Review Text

Mo Yan deserves a place in world literature. His voice will find its way into the heart of the reader, just as Kundera and Garcia Marquez have.

Review Quote

Mo Yan deserves a place in world literature. His voice will find its way into the heart of the reader, just as Kundera and Garcia Marquez have.

Promotional "Headline"

"A beautiful and unforgettable classic set in 1930s rural China from the 2012 Nobel Prize-winning author "

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