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Cover of Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

Soul Mountain

Gao Xingjian

  • 563 pages · about 9 hours
  • First published 1990
  • 48 editions
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1 About this book

Soul Mountain is a novel by Gao Xingjian. The novel is loosely based on the author's own journey into rural China, which was inspired by a false diagnosis of lung cancer. The novel is a part autobiographical, part fictional account of a man's journey to find the fabled mountain Lingshan.

It is a combination of story fragments, travel accounts, unnamed characters (referred to by the pronouns "I", "you", "she", etc.), and folk poetry and legends. An English version translated by Mabel Lee was published in the United States on December 5, 2000.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

  • Meaning (psychology)
  • China
  • Description and travel
  • Social life and customs
  • Manners and customs
  • Near and far eastern fiction

2 About Gao Xingjian

Born 1940

Gao Xingjian (Chinese: 高行健; born January 4, 1940) is a Chinese émigré and later French naturalized novelist, playwright, critic, painter, photographer, film director, and translator who was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity." He is also a noted translator (particularly of Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco), screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated…

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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