'Gao's portraits of fellow wanderers, farmers and party officials are vivid and shine a light on their place and time. The language (wonderfully translated by Mabel Lee) is luminous and tactile...There's a feeling of entering and moving through a place we had seen only through mist.' Time Out
'When he writes of his experiences in the real world, Gao transcends cultural barriers. A good story will out in any language, and when Gao is good he is staggeringly so. His writing about the Cultural Revolution is remarkable.' Daily Telegraph
'A picaresque novel on an epic scale..."Soul Mountain" bristles with narratives in miniature - stories from ancient Chinese history, folk tales, childhood reminiscences, memories of the Cultural Revolution, as well as bitter arguments and passionate sex. Gao's aim is to represent "the ineffability of life", and, as far as that is possible to do, he has done it in this complex, rich and strange novel.' Independent on Sunday
Gao Xingjian ('gow shing-jen') is the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in 1940 in Jiangxi province in eastern China, he earned a degree in French in Beijing, and embarked on a life of letters. Choosing exile in 1987, he settled in Paris, where he completed 'Soul Mountain' two years later. In 1992 he was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He is a playwright and painter as well as a fiction writer and critic.
Mabel Lee is Honorary Associate Professor of Chinese at the University of Sydney, and an authhority on twentieth-century Chinese history and literature.
