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Soul Mountain
Mabel Lee
Gao Xingjian
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2000. Part travel diary, part philosophy, part love story, ‘Soul Mountain’ is an elegant, unforgettable novel that journeys deep into the heart of modern-day China.In 1982 Chinese playwright, novelist and artist Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer, the very disease that had killed his father. For six weeks Gao inhabited a transcendental state of imminent death, treating himself to the finest foods he could afford while spending time reading in an old graveyard in the Beijing suburbs. But a secondary 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 in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing. He travelled first to the ancient forests of central China and from there to the east coast, passing through eight provinces and seven nature reserves, a journey of fifteen thousand kilometres over a period of five months. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is ‘Soul Mountain’.Interwoven into this picaresque journey are myriad stories and countless memorable characters – from venerable Daoist masters and Buddhist monks and nuns to mythical Wild Men; deadly Qichun snakes to farting buses. Conventions are challenged, preconceptions are thwarted and the human condition, with all its foibles and triumphs, is laid bare.
SOUL
MOUNTAIN
GAO XINGJIAN
Translated from the Chinese by Mabel Lee
Copyright (#ulink_6ccf6b85-259b-5d0b-88c3-08129c144cf9)
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published as Lingshan in Taiwan by Lianjing Chubanshe in 1990 First published in English by Flamingo (Australia) in 2000
Text copyright © Gao Xingjian 1990
English language translation copyright © Mabel Lee 2000
Gao Xingjian asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007119233
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007385737
Version: 2018-10-09
Praise (#ulink_0c65da69-99f2-5dc1-967c-b94662b65604)
From the international reviews for Soul Mountain:
‘Arguably [Gao’s] finest work… Soul Mountain is a quirky, thick, playful monster of a book, a bit like what one might expect if Beckett or Ionesco had traveled in China and been steeped in Chinese myths. It is not easy to say what the novel is about — and yet the marvel is that somehow it is still both engaging and elegant.’
New York Times
‘A rich soup of a book… One man’s personal and philosophical odyssey evolves against the dramatic and vibrantly physical background of Central China’s ancient forests. Part novel, part philosophical tract, the genius of Soul Mountain lies in its not attempting to offer any answers… It instead belongs to that curious genre of intellectual quest dominated by the great German writer WG Sebald. This search for self serves to set the book beyond cultures while also succeeding in presenting the Western reader with a wonderfully broad portrait of a country caught between the ancient and the modern in a most fundamental way.’
Irish Times
‘Gao’s flight to rural China to evade imprisonment inspired this dazzling autobiographical novel… Superficially, this epic picaresque resembles familiar western literary forms but its bedrock is utterly other.’
Guardian
‘An original voice unlike any contemporary writing available in English… Soul Mountain is an extraordinary product of an imagination infused with European and Chinese cultures; an exploration of individual identity in a society that exalts the collective; and a daring play with voice that plunders ancient Chinese myths, philosophy, history, folk songs and memory’
The Australian
Table of Contents
Cover (#u968338ee-315a-5038-b875-270207218ccb)
Title Page (#u04207196-5c38-556c-9412-d233c7f16ea2)
Copyright (#u1a739eca-f992-5c9e-bbce-a12cf25c804e)
Praise (#u539e5db5-a95c-5a22-b252-0a39942de221)
Introduction (#u5e6b76e3-970f-56a7-a4fa-a9544554cdc5)
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