Red Sorghum is a braided story with three different strands, in that the story combines elements of three different generations of the same family, the Shandong family. Early on, the family makes sorghum wine, but as the Second Sino-Japanese War unfolds the family transitions.
To begin, an unnamed grandson of Commander Yu tells of the effects of the war on the family. His grandmother was arranged to the wine-maker against her will, but she takes over when the speaker's grandfather murders her husband. Their wine is very good.
In a short aside, the novel flashes forward to the gruesome scene of his grandmother's body being exhumed from its wartime mass grave to receive a proper burial. When a stranger arrives to the funeral on a mule, he meets his own brutal death.
War brought the family much misery, and a good deal of the novel is retelling stories about family men who died or were captured and tortured. Sometimes, the family's passionate appetite for sex leads to incest.
Uncle Arhat's story is told. Uncle Arhat was captured and tortured by the Japanese, allegedly for treason. He is skinned alive. The story is retold in the novel several times, with different assumptions each time. One time he is regarded like a saint or a martyr, and then other times, the same story is told with disrespect, as if Uncle Arhat was stupid.
Intermittent stories of Commander Yu describe his as a balanced person with equal evil and equal good, but with each to a great degree. In one meaningful story, dogs, fighting over the bodies of the slain war victims, turn on each other and commit cannibalistic attacks against one another.
By the end of the (chronological events of) the novel, the year is 1970. The unnamed grandson resumes the narrative and pays his respects to his ancestors at their grave. He notices some red Sorghum and sees it is being choked out by a new type of sorghum.
