Representation of History in Red Sorghum

Abstract

Written by the Nobel laureate Chinese writer Mo Yan, Red Sorghum is a complicated historical novel. This thematically complex novel was first published in Chinese in 1987 and English in 1993. Unfolded through the perspective of a child who is the grandson of the protagonist, the novel bears a strong resemblance to an epic. The novel consists of five sections that disclose and interweave the story of the narrator’s grandfather and grandmother in Gaomi during the turbulent decades of the 1920s to 1940s. It depicts the bandit culture, the Japanese occupation, and the harsh conditions endured by poor farmworkers. In the present paper, an attempt has been made to study how the history of China has been represented in the novel Red Sorghum. It has been made to prove that Mo Yan has dealt with history in his own unique way. For him, fiction is the imaginative representation of history.