Red Sorghum

 

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.