The following review was contributed by: John Walsh: CLICK TO VIEW John Walsh's Reviews

Red sorghum is a cereal grass that, in Mo Yan’s wonderful and magical novel, stands proudly across the territory of Northeast Gaomi Township as a form of red blanket or flag, mirroring the great acts of our parents and grandparents and dwarfing the petty actions of our days. As it is observed on one occasion, in the days of our fathers, even dogs were the equal of people. And so their tempestuous love affairs, their struggles with nature and, above all, their resistance to the fierce Japanese invaders tells a tale of bravery and heroism which can scarcely ever be matched. This theme is marvelously complicated and undermined by the repetition of events, each time providing more detail and information and protagonists and what has gone before and each time bringing the dead back to life, as their influence lives on in our hearts but in ways that change and reflect out own opinions, situations and feelings.

At times, these differences clash openly, as in when, perhaps most shockingly, grandfather decides to exhume his deceased wife. While he marvels at how she is restored to the air in a form more beautiful and ethereal than ever before, as if she had been sleeping only, everyone else in attendance is busy retching and vomiting because of the hideous and indescribable stench. Again, after the Battle at Black Water River against the Japanese comes the even fiercer struggle against the hundreds of dogs who have gathered to feast on human corpses and whose diet has lent them additional cunning and agility.

This is a novel of extraordinary beauty but, also, extraordinary suffering and misery. The worldview of the Chinese is very different from that of western people and there is little here about forgiveness or redemption. The best that can be hoped for is to seize such happiness as is immediately available and fight anyone from heaven who seeks to steal it away. It has enabled Mo Yan to become one of the most feted of all modern Chinese authors and has given rise to a successful feature film. In this edition, translator Howard Goldblatt has been able to use the Taiwanese version, which restores many cuts which were required for the mainland Chinese edition. His work is surefooted and only occasionally lapses into parochial Americanisms. The book is the equal of all but a handful of novels of the twentieth century and I will certainly seek out his other works.