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RED SORGHUM

Name: RED SORGHUM
Author: Mo Yan
ISBN: 0-670-84402-0

by Mo Yan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1993

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A powerful new voice on the brutal unrest of rural China in the late 20's and 30's. Mo Yan's debut novel (and first US publication) was the basis of a 1988 Oscar-nominated film. A member of the young ``root-seeking'' writers whose focus is the Chinese countryside, Mo Yan tells the story of three generations—simultaneously ``most heroic and most bastardly''- -caught up in these turbulent years. Set in a region where the sorghum is grown, the tale's as much a family history as the story of a particular time and place—a place where the red sorghum, which ``forms a glittering sea of blood and is the traditional spirit of the region,'' is also a metaphor for change and loss. The novel opens as 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's killed. Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present as the narrator moves back and forth recording the war's progress, the fighting between rival Chinese warlords, and the history of his family. Commander Yu, a former bandit, had fallen in love with his wife when she was the young bride of the rich son of a distillery owner. Yu had murdered the husband, and this murder is one of many in a cycle in which brutality and betrayal alternate with love and sacrifice. In the 1970's, the narrator returns to pay his respects to the family graves—only to find that the red sorghum, ``our family's glorious talisman,'' replaced by a green hybrid, ``has been drowned in a raging flood of revolution and no longer exists.'' Graphic scenes of violence become numbingly repetitive, but Mo Yan tempers his brutal tale with a powerfully evocative lyricism. A notable new arrival.

Pub Date: April 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-670-84402-0

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
LIFE AND DEATH ARE WEARING ME OUT
by Mo Yan & translated by Howard Goldblatt

- BOOK REVIEW
BIG BREASTS AND WIDE HIPS
by Mo Yan & translated by Howard Goldblatt

- BOOK REVIEW
SHIFU, YOU’LL DO ANYTHING FOR A LAUGH
by Mo Yan & translated by Howard Goldblatt

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THE COLORS OF US

by Karen Katz ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1999

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This vibrant, thoughtful book from Katz (Over the Moon, 1997) continues her tribute to her adopted daughter, Lena, born in Guatemala. Lena is “seven. I am the color of cinnamon. Mom says she could eat me up”; she learns during a painting lesson that to get the color brown, she will have to “mix red, yellow, black, and white paints.” They go for a walk to observe the many shades of brown: they see Sonia, who is the color of creamy peanut butter; Isabella, who is chocolate brown; Lucy, both peachy and tan; Jo-Jin, the color of honey; Kyle, “like leaves in fall”; Mr. Pellegrino, the color of pizza crust, golden brown. Lena realizes that every shade is beautiful, then mixes her paints accordingly for portraits of her friends—“The colors of us!” Bold illustrations celebrate diversity with a child’s open-hearted sensibility and a mother’s love. (Picture book. 6-8)

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-8050-5864-8

Page Count: 28

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE TRAIL TO BUDDHA'S MIRROR

by Don Winslow ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 18, 1992

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Neal Carey, the Smollett-loving specialist in finding people who don't want to be found (A Cool Breeze on the Underground, 1990), is hustled off to San Francisco to drag AWOL pesticide expert Robert Pendleton away from china doll Li Lan and back to paternal corporation AgriTech. But the fireworks that erupt after Neal's found the happy couple make him wonder whether gorgeous, talented painter Li Lan isn't actually a Communist agent who's trying to woo Pendleton back to her country; by the time Neal has been taken prisoner in the Walled City of Hong Kong, he's already gotten the Communists, the CIA, and AgriTech ready to burn him. And more trouble lies ahead, as shadowy patriarch Xao Xiyang and his treacherous underling Peng plot against each other to manipulate Neal into exposing Pendleton and Li Lan in a climax that still has room for a surprise or two. Despite Neal's inveterate habit of wising off in his mind's mouth, this is a sturdy two evenings' worth of entertainment.