RED SORGHUM: A Novel of China.

New York:: Viking,, (1993). Hardcover first edition -. Near fine in near fine dust jacket.. First US printing. The first novel by one of China's most innovative writers, and his first book to appear in English, translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt (with a note that, at the request of the author, this is based on the 1988 Tapei Hongfan Chinese edition which restored some of the deletions made in the 1987 Mainland Chinese edition). Mo Yan is a pseudonymic phrase meaning 'Don't speak.' Over more than 30 years, Mo Yan has been writing brutally vibrant stories about rural life in China that flout official Party ideology and celebrate individualism over conformity. He also flouts literary conformity, spiking his earthy realism with fantasy, hallucination and metafiction. The story in this book revolves around three generations of the Shandong family between 1923 and 1976 as the narrator tells the story of his family's struggles, first as distillery owners making sorghum wine and then as resistance fighters during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The first parts were the basis of the award-winning 1987 film of the same name. 359 pp. Translated by Howard Goldblatt. In 2012 Mo Yan was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. 387 pp.