Red Sorghum

A Novel of China

De: Mo Yan, Howard Goldblatt - translator

Narrado por: George Backman

The acclaimed novel of love and resistance during late 1930s China by Mo Yan, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Spanning 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 Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.

A legend in China, where it won major literary awards and inspired an Oscar-nominated film directed by Zhang Yimou, Red Sorghum is a book in which fable and history collide to produce fiction that is entirely new—and unforgettable.

©1993 Howard Goldblatt (P)2013 Audible Inc.

Not One Hundred Years of Solitude

A poor copy. Entertaining, to be sure, but it is an initiation, and imitation is its flaw.

Best narrator I've ever heard!

The narrator was hands down the best I've heard on audible. he spoke with passion that really made you feel the story. the novel itself can be a little hard to follow, switching between various timelines, but the imagery and realism both in the novel and performed by the narrator makes this a must listen!

very violent book

Very violent plotline. i strugled a little bit with it cause it is a bit long.

I feel battered and bruised

I finished this book, because, dang it, I finish what I start. But it was a slog. I felt like I was pushing through an endless sorghum field being randomly battered by criminals hiding in the thick. The writing is vivid and powerful, but the story, and the pain, and the violence, and the utter lack of Hope, leave me feeling tired, with no desire to revisit the story or the pages. I appreciate the look into pre war, post war, pre revolution, post revolution China, but I couldn't lose myself in the pages. it's been since I read Love in the Time of Cholera that I just felt relief at getting to the end of a book, rather than pleasure and accomplishment. I do appreciate the rich symbolism. the red sorghum is at once the source of the family's income, a setting for their pain, and a symbol for their loss. But my overwhelming feeling is relief at being done, and I'm not going back

Well written except when it's not

Mo Yan writes, as always, with tremendous skill, and a certain delectable freedom of style. His characters shine brilliantly and vie continually for an audience with the readers undivided consideration few if any ever win it.

Red Sorghum in particular is a gripping family biography. A bare back full tilt gallop through the bloody tragedies, torn hopes, and brief joys of three generations. The unstoppable onslaught of hardship and terror is tempered by small but undeniable moments of brilliant beauty and bright peace. The only draw back is the chronology of the narrative, with is not linear and serves more to confuse the reader than add anything particularly compelling to the narrative. Other than that Red Sorghum is a staggering work of literary genius.