GAO XINGJIAN (b. 1940) is a Chinese-born novelist, playwright, critic, and painter.  He was awarded the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama."  An émigré to France since 1987, Gao was granted French citizenship in 1997.

This collection contains two bestselling novels, short stories, six plays, essays, and a selection of Gao's ink paintings.

SOUL MOUNTAIN (1990) mixes literary genres and utilizes shifting narrative voices, and was specially cited by the Nobel committee as "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves."  The novel details a five-month voyage of discovery from Sichuan province to the coast, passing through eight provinces and seven nature reserves, and life among Chinese minorities such as the Qiang, Miao, and Yi peoples on the fringes of Han Chinese civilization.  ONE MAN'S BIBLE (1999) mixes autobiographical details with fictional techniques to create indelible portraits of daily life under a harsh, dehumanizing political regime.  Gao revisits the central moments of his life, ranging across time and space, gradually illuminating the nature of life before, during, and after China's disastrous Cultural Revolution, to give us a profound meditation on a life marked by personal and political trauma.

BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER is a collection of six short stories written between 1983 and 1990.  Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft afterglow of memory and nostalgia, these stories hum with simplicity and wisdom.

THE OTHER SHORE contains five plays: "The Other Shore" (1986), "Between Life and Death" (1991), "Dialogue and Rebuttal" (1992), "Nocturnal Wanderer" (1993), and "Weekend Quartet" (1995).  Combining Zen philosophy and a modern worldview, they serve to illuminate the gritty realities of life, death, sex, loneliness, and exile, all essential concerns in Gao's understanding of the existence of modern man.  A more recent play, SNOW IN AUGUST (2000), is based on the life of the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China.  Packed with the myriad sights and sounds of both the Eastern and Western theatrical traditions, the play exudes wonder and mysticism, and affords the audience fascinating vignettes of Gao's vision of life and existence -- an awareness of the Void and the need for a personal peace with oneself.

AESTHETICS AND CREATION (2012) is a collection of essays in which Gao exposes the political dynamics of so-called "modernity" in Western literature and art, and how this has been enthusiastically embraced in China since the 1980s.  In other essays he analyses traditional and modern European and Chinese notions of fiction, theatre and art, and elaborates on what aspects of writers and artists from both cultures have informed him in developing his own aesthetics in narration, performance and the visual arts.

INK PAINTINGS is the catalogue accompanying an exhibition of Gao's art at the Haggerty Museum of Art, Marquette University, in 2003.

Gao's Nobel Prize lecture, "The Case for Literature," is included as a supplement to the HarperCollins edition of SOUL MOUNTAIN.


The following books are in PDF and/or ePUB & MOBI format:

* AESTHETICS AND CREATION (Cambria, 2012).  Translated by Mabel Lee. -- PDF

* BUYING A FISHING ROD FOR MY GRANDFATHER: Stories (HarperCollins, 2004).  Translated by Mabel Lee. -- PDF + ePUB/MOBI

* INK PAINTINGS, 1983-1993 (Haggerty Museum of Art, 2003). -- PDF 

* ONE MAN'S BIBLE (HarperCollins, 2002).  Translated by Mabel Lee. -- PDF + ePUB/MOBI

* THE OTHER SHORE: Plays by Gao Xingjian (Chinese UP, 1999).  Translated by Gilbert C. F. Fong. -- ePUB/MOBI

* SNOW IN AUGUST (Chinese UP, 2003).  Translated by Gilbert C. F. Fong. -- ePUB/MOBI

* SOUL MOUNTAIN (HarperCollins, 2000).  Translated by Mabel Lee. -- PDF + ePUB/MOBI

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