Soul Mountain

Lyrical writer Xingjian, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000, creates a multifaceted, mythic story of a man's physical and mental journey of discovery after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer proves to have been wrong. His goal is Lingshan, the sacred mountain, but what he attains are the stories he learns (or makes up) along the way. Like an epic poem of old, these stories touch all aspects of human existence, and contain all things a man needs to know himself and reach completeness. Brian Keeler's easy grace and tone are perfect for this story of storytelling. He manages to convey the emotions of each character without sounding affected yet simultaneously creates a poetic cadence and rhythm. This gentle reading works well with the material as one story flows into another without any demarcation between what is real and what is make-believe. D.G. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Starred review from October 30, 2000
Gao Xingjian was almost unknown in this country when he won this year's Nobel prize. Gao, who lives in exile in Paris, was embroiled in controversy in China in the 1980s because of his plays. This novel is his largest and perhaps most personal work. Around the time Gao's plays were arousing controversy, he was diagnosed with lung cancerDfalsely, as it turned out. The "detestable omniscient self" of the Gao-like narrator sharing these circumstances goes partly underground by getting out of Beijing and going to various underdeveloped regions of China. Officially, Gao is gathering folk songs and tales, but underneath that task we discern a desire to reconnect with the fate of his family, which, like so many others, was fragmented by the revolution. The book itself is narrated in two voices: a rational first person "I" and an emotional second person "you." Gao stays with park rangers, old friends and Daoist monks. The "you" wanders a more fantastic, otherworldly Chinese landscape, looking for LingshanDthe "soul mountain" of the title. To the second person is allotted a series of frenzied sexual encounters with a series of rebellious women. Within this baggy structure, there are repeated memories of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, episodes concerning "wild men" (the Chinese equivalent of yeti), reflections on China's environmental degradation and comments on old ruins. Seeking out old singers and shamans like a connoisseur of extinct cultures, 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. Agent, Georges Borchardt.