In 1983, Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer, and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death.B ut six weeks later, a second examination revealed there was no cancer — he had won "a second reprieve from death." Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing and began a journey of 15,000 kilometers into the remote mountains and ancient forests of Sichuan in southwest China. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Mountain.Bold, lyrical, and prodigious, Soul Moutain probes the human soul with an uncommon directness and candor and delights in the freedom of the imagination to expand the notion of the individual self.

“Chinese literature [of the future] will have to contend with the creative energy and the daring of Gao Xingjian.”—Le Monde

“It is a relief to come to a book that celebrates the pleasures of literature with such gusto and knowingness.”— Courier-Mail [Australia]

“His largest and perhaps most personal work…Gao has created a sui generis work, one that, in combining story, reminiscence, meditation and journalism, warily comes to terms with the shocks of both Maoism and capitalism.”— Publishers Weekly