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Gao Xingian ____________________________
China (1940- )
Gao Xingjian , born January 4, 1940 in Ganzhou (Jiangxi province) in eastern China, is today a French citizen. Writer of prose, translator, dramatist, director, critic and artist, Gao Xingjian grew up during the aftermath of the Japanese invasion. His father was a bank official and his mother an amateur actress who stimulated the young Gao's interest in the theatre and writing. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) he was sent to a re-education camp and felt it necessary to burn a suitcase full of manuscripts. Not until 1979 could he publish his work and travel abroad, to France and Italy. Several of his experimental and pioneering plays - inspired in part by Brecht, Artaud and Beckett - were produced at the Theatre of Popular Art in Beijing. His absurd drama Bus Stop (1983) was condemned during the campaign against "intellectual pollution" (described by one eminent member of the party as the most pernicious piece of writing since the foundation of the People's Republic). L'Homme sauvage / Wild Man (1985) also gave rise to heated domestic polemic and international attention.
In order to avoid harassment he undertook a ten-month walking-tour of the forest and mountain regions of Sichuan Province, tracing the course of the Yangzi river from its source to the coast. In 1987 he left China and settled down a year later in Paris as a political refugee. After the massacre on the Square of Heavenly Peace in 1989 he left the Chinese Communist Party. After publication of La fuite / Fugitives, which takes place against the background of this massacre, he was declared persona non grata by the regime and his works were banned.
Gao Xingjian paints in ink and has had some thirty international exhibitions and provides the cover illustrations for his own books. (Nobel Foundation)
MAJOR NOVELS:
Soul Mountain (1999)
"The Case for Literature." Nobel Lecture. Nobel Foundation. December 10, 2000. This is his acceptance speech upon winning the Nobel Prize. Xingjian, Gao. "Excerpts from One Man's Bible." Reprinted on Nobel e-Museum Web site. Nobel Foundation. December 2000. This excerpt offers insight into his existential philosophy.
Lee, Mabel. "Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian and his Novel Soul Mountain. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture: A WWWeb Journal 2.3 (September 2000). Excellent overview with a very extensive bibliography of books and articles on the author.
"Gao Xingjian." Books and Writers. 2003. Useful bio, with a brief discussion of Soul Mountain .
9 June 2004 (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gao.htm)
Nagle, Robert. "Gao Xingjian and Soul Mountain: Ambivalent Storytelling ." www.imaginaryplanet.net. September 2002. Interesting essay on the blog of a Texas writer. Li-Chun Lin, Sylvia. "Between the Individual & the Collective." World Literature Today 75.1 (Winter 2001): 12-19.
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