Mo Yan

I know it's lazy to describe a book in terms of other books, but when I say that "Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out" has the Lebenslust and earthiness of Rabelais — the fantastical evocation of village life and the life of children of The Tin Drum — the satirical perversity of Swift and Gogol (whose Dead Souls shares this book's interest in the risks and opportunities of turbulent times) — that goes some way to explaining why I loved it. It reminded me too of European writers like show more Gombrowicz, Konwicki, Hrabal, and Hašek, in its irreverent humour and surrealistic flirtations against a backdrop of buereaucratic terror. And although I've read very little Chinese literature, I was delighted to trace a stylistic and thematic line from Cao Xueqin, whose mastery of tonal shifts — from sentimental to slapstick, sometimes in a single chapter — and eschewal of black and white morality, archetypes and clichés are equally evident in Mo Yan's multi-generational story. In short, I fucking loved it. show less

It took two weeks to read this first and best-known novel from 2012 Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan. Red Sorghum is harrowing reading, best read in tandem with something less confronting. It's historical fiction but not as you know it.

In five parts originally published serially in magazines, the fragments of this novel eventually bring together the family history and myths of three generations between 1923 and 1976. It covers the period of brutal Japanese Occupation (1937-1945) and the Chinese show more Civil War (1927~1950) when the lawlessness was exacerbated by bandits and rival gangs fighting for supremacy amongst themselves.

The narrative isn't chronological but chops and changes across time periods. It's confusing at first (though no more than many a modernist novel) but once the characters, their relationships and the time periods are established it begins to make sense. Narrated in merciless detail by the world-weary survivor, the family's story (though not the novel) begins with a reluctant bride, his grandma. She is being married off to further her peasant father's fortunes, to a man known to have leprosy. She escapes that fate because one of the bearers fancies her and solves the problem with murder. This is the catalyst for a life of violence, and she takes over the running of the distillery which makes red sorghum wine.

She's an interesting character, because on the one hand she's submissive (and has small dainty feet as a nice Chinese girl should have at that time), and on the other she has agency and takes matters into her own hands. She is vulnerable to rape and unwanted pregnancy, but she is smart and decisive. When she inherits the distillery, she speaks to the workers with a charming blend of authority (because she has a higher social status) and humility (because she needs their help). She also has good socialist values, telling them that they are equals and that if they stay with her, they will all share in the money that they make from the wine. But her sense of equality among men doesn't extend to accepting the bearer who made her good fortune possible. In the Chinese-made film, which I watched afterwards, there is a coy scene that implies a consensual relationship among the sorghum stalks, and later a scene depicting a happy family, with mother and child playing amongst the wine tubs while the father looks on with a benign smile — but that's among many liberties taken in the film.

But before long the Japanese arrive and these peasants despite their courage have no chance against superior numbers and weaponry, especially since rival Chinese sabotage their efforts as well. The violence and savagery on all sides is hard to read, and Mo Yan spares the reader nothing.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2024/09/18/red-sorghum-1987-by-mo-yan-translated-by-how... show less

A family in rural China in the 1920s and 30s confronts banditry, civil war and the Japanese occupation. Mo Yan plays with the timeline to force us to read this as a novel about individual people, not abstract historical events, and there's a lot of local colour — most of it red and cereal-based — grim wit, and human resilience in the face of overwhelming odds.

Inevitably, given that it's dealing with times in which civil order had broken down in the face of barbarism and competing show more factions, there's a lot of violence. Mo Yan places at least one act of extreme violence at the centre of each chapter, and each one is described in loving and often grotesque detail. I'm guessing that the idea is that we are supposed to realise how the incessant piling up of shocking detail is desensitising us to what is going on, in something like the way it might if we were confronted with it in real life, but after a while it just started to feel vaguely pornographic.

I can see the importance of this book, and it probably goes a long way to explain how China works and why the current Chinese government is so authoritarian and so extremely allergic to any sign of disorder. But, from the perspective of my particular squeamish, western, liberal ivory tower, it's not really a book that I would ever want to read again or to recommend to anyone else. show less

In 1948, the Chinese landlord Ximen Nao was murdered by his villagers. Such events were commonplace in the China of the time, but Ximen Nao felt he had been unjustly dealt with, for in his eyes, he had been an excellent landlord. Two years later, on January 1, 1950, still full of rage and still proclaiming his innocence, he was sent back to earth by Lord Yama, ruler of the underworld. Lord Yama couldn't bear to listen to him any longer.

Full of hope, Ximen Nao made the journey back, only to show more find he had been tricked. He had been reincarnated not as a human, but as a donkey foal. Worse yet, the farm where he landed was his own, now that of his former peasant, Lan Lian. Adding insult to injury, Lan's pregnant wife was Ximen Nao's former first concubine, Yingchun.

Ximen Donkey had retained enough of his previous humanity to not only follow the events in Ximen Village, but also to be recognized by his wife, Ximen Bai, now fallen upon hard times for having been married to a landlord. Lan and Yingchun also found something compelling in the donkey and treated him with extra care, going so far as to create a prosthetic hoof for him after he suffered a terrible accident.

When collectivization came, Lan refused to join the new cooperative and remained an independent farmer. This created great hardship for himself, Yingchun and their three children, the older two being twins born to Yingchun and Ximen Nao before his death. The hardship they experienced trying to make it on their own was made worse by the famine. Ten years after returning to earth, Ximen Donkey was killed and eaten by the starving villagers.

In awarding Mo Yan the Nobel Prize for literature, the Swedish Academy said his work "with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary". This perfectly summarizes this novel, in which Ximen Nao will return again and again in the cycle of life as various animals, until his mind is at peace. Lord Yama will not allow him to return as a human until all his hatred is gone, saying there is too much hatred on earth already.

In each incarnation, Ximen Nao will maintain links with his family, following them over the next forty years. His animal personae allow him free rein for observation and comment. His adventures as a pig on the Ximen Village Production Brigade Apricot Garden Pig Farm present the greatest opportunity for satire, as giant pig farms were one of Mao's great failed projects. Mo Yan himself is a character, first as the village's child mischief maker and later as a scurrilous author.

As Ximen Nao's earthly manifestations change, so too does the world around him. The Cultural Revolution comes and goes, Mao dies. Overt capitalism creeps back slowly at first, then with excessive speed and greed. By the end, there are billionaires in mansions and beggars on the streets once more. The wheel has turned completely. Ximen Nao has learned his lesson.

It's nobody's fault...Everything is determined by fate and there's no way anyone can escape it.

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