Product Description

In 1983, Chinese playwright, critic, fiction writer, and painter Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer and faced imminent death.But 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.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #44489 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-01
• Released on: 2001-10-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Amazon.com Review
As one of Gao Xingjian's characters remarks, if a fiction writer could know the true stories of the people he passes on the street, he would be amazed. Surely the Nobel laureate's own story, which forms the basis of Soul Mountain, is worthy of amazement. In 1983 Gao was diagnosed with lung cancer, the disease that had killed his father. At the same time, he had been threatened with arrest for his counterrevolutionary writings and was preparing to flee Beijing for the remote regions of southwest China. Shortly before his departure, however, the condemned man got at least a partial reprieve: a second set of x-rays revealed no cancer at all. On the heels of this extraordinary redemption, he began the circuitous journey that would lead him to the sacred (and possibly mythical) mountain of Lingshan--and to this daring, historically resonant novel.

A destination chosen arbitrarily, at the suggestion of a fellow traveler, the elusive Lingshan becomes rich with meaning for the narrator of Soul Mountain. Meanwhile, the narrator himself shows a tendency to go forth and multiply. First he divides into You and I. Then You generates yet a third voice, a somewhat simple but intense young woman named She, followed by He--and none of these personae can resist the elemental lure of the sacred site. Indeed, the search for Lingshan becomes a metaphor for all spiritual striving:

Would it be better to go along the main road? It will take longer travelling by the main road? After making some detours you will understand in your heart? Once you understand in your heart you will find it as soon as you look for it? The important thing is to be sincere of heart? If your heart is sincere then your wish will be granted?

Along the way, I and You mourn the devastations of the Cultural Revolution, when thousands of monuments, temples, and graves were reduced to rubble. The obliteration of these reminders of the dead becomes a torment to the narrators of the novel, who struggle to assert their individuality--itself a proscribed act in Communist China--against what they see as a false and brutal ideal that has swept away history, literature, and tradition as decisively as it has destroyed the ancient forests. (At one point Gao describes the sad spectacle of the few remaining pandas, who wander a shrinking woodland wearing electronic transmitters.) Seamlessly translated by the Australian scholar Mabel Lee, Soul Mountain is a masterpiece of self-observation set against a soulful denunciation of "progress" and practicality. --Regina Marler

From Publishers Weekly
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. (Dec)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Not only was Chinese writer Gao Xingjian, winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature, condemned by the authorities for his "decadent" modernist ideas and forbidden to publish or stage his immensely popular plays during the early 1980s, he was also diagnosed with lung cancer. He readied himself for death, but a second examination granted him a clean bill of health. In light of this miraculous reprieve and rumors of his impending arrest, Gao Xingjian left Beijing and spent five months wandering the forests of central China and following the Chang River. This episodic, loosely autobiographical, philosophical, and spellbinding novel traces just such a journey, illuminating both the wandering hero's mindscape and the dramatic landscapes he traverses. Curiously, Gao Xingjian's unnamed narrator, a writer, addresses his readers as "you," as in: "You can't explain why you're here," a device that induces readers to put themselves in the narrator's place but also makes them accomplices in the narrator's harsh self-evaluations, as though he's pointing his finger in the mirror and saying, "You are weak." His destination is Lingshan, or Soul Mountain, which may or may not exist, but it is the quest that matters, and his descriptions of the wilderness and the people he meets, especially the unhappy or daring women he becomes intimate with, are shimmeringly sensuous and piquantly observant. He revels in the beauty of nature, but he also seeks out stories of Buddhist monks and Taoist priests, shamans and bandits, emperors and musicians, risking arrest for his fascination with China's lush and complex past, which the Communists attempted to brutally eradicate. In one fable-like chapter after another, the tragedies of this vast land--the violence, oppression, and sexism; the clear-cutting of forests, polluting of rivers, and forced extinction of animals; the destruction of temples and suppression of art--are pondered and mourned, as are the moral limitations of the self. Gao Xingjian's masterpiece expresses sorrow and anger, wonder and confusion, humor and metaphysics, lust and tenderness, and a profound longing for meaning and freedom. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Customer Reviews

You have to learn to read this book
I have read and re-read this book a dozen times in the last year. The first time was difficult and now I am addicted. Is there anything to match Xinjiang's descriptions of the Miai festivals, the Daoist rituals in their hidden mountain temple and the old craftsman's last night as he carves the face of Tianguo?

I think you have to learn to read this book. Western authors create characters in order to tell a story; in the far-east the story exists to describe the characters and is dropped as soon as the job is done. This is why there are so many disconnected parts, stories starting from the middle, ending abruptly. Let it go.....enjoy Xinjiang's fragmented tales, powerful descriptions and gentle humour. "A true traveller has no goals, it is the absence of goals which makes an ultimate traveller"; this quotation from the book probably sums it up very nicely.

A journey of one's mind written with subtle religious tenor
I read the Chinese version first and found much was lost in English translation. I think Soul Mountain could have been used by the author as a metaphore for the purest unpolluted conscience in everyone's heart because of this old Chinese saying "ren ren you ge ling shan ta". According to Zen teaching, the more eager one tries to grasp it, the more it eludes one's reach. Soul Mountain remains as one of my favorite books for it was so beautifully written in such a subtle, enigmatic, philosophical, and thought-provoking style. -- Xingzi

a well constructed spiritual and cultural journey
Soul Mountain has elements of a spiritual journey and a cultural exploration. Translating such a work from Chinese is no doubt a challenge. As a result, much of the language doesn't flow. At times, the conversations between the speaker and these ghost-like female figures seem almost adolescent. The story and imagery manage to get through. The villages and people that turn up create the world outside, while the author's constant musings adds more depth, as well as illuminating his internal cosmos. It is sometimes difficult to separate actual characters from avatars, but that mystic quality gives the book its flavor. The power of the Yangtze, the dust of the country roads, the quaint, strained apartment of a girl--all are very clearly conveyed. It is a story like no other. Portions do slow down with the avatars throwing fits or whining or yelling, but the remainder is very good. The cover painting nearly captures the essence itself.