In 1983 Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death. But six weeks later, a second examination revealed there was no cancer--he had won "a reprieve from death" and had been thrown back into the world of the living. Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell on a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing. He traveled to the remote mountains and ancient forests of central China...
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In 1983 Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death. But six weeks later, a second examination revealed there was no cancer--he had won "a reprieve from death" and had been thrown back into the world of the living. Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell on a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing. He traveled to the remote mountains and ancient forests of central China and from there back to the east coast, a journey of fifteen thousand kilometers over a period of five months. The result of this epic voyage of discovery was Soul Mountain.
A bold, lyrical, prodigious novel, Soul Mountain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor. Interwoven with a myriad of stories and countless memorable characters--from venerable Taoist masters and Buddhist nuns to mythical Wild Men, deadly Qichun snakes and farting buses--is the narrator's poignant inner journey and search for freedom.
