July Translations Book Club - Red Sorghum by Mo Yan

Join us for the Translations Book Club gathering on 8th July at 6pm at The Book Cow, where the month's chosen title is Red Sorghum by Mo Yan (translation by Howard Goldblatt).

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 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.

Buy the book on our website or in store. Spaces will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. New members are most welcome.