Gao Xingjian is the first Chinese Nobel Laureate in Literature. The Swedish Academy summarized his achievements as follows: "An oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chines novel and drama." The collection, which aims to present the diversity of Gao's literary talents, contains the highlights of his essays, stories, plays and poems.

Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian is amongst the most challenging writers of the present era. He has probed the dynamics of Chinese and European literature and developed unique strategies for the writing of seventeen plays, two novels, a collection of short stories and a collection of poems. He has also written two collections of criticism. The present collection takes the title Aesthetics and Creation from the name of the Chinese collection from which most of these essays are drawn, but it also includes some of Gao's most recent unpublished essays. University of Sydney academic Mabel Lee is the...