About this title: Venerable Daoist masters, Buddhist nuns, mythical Wild Men, and deadly Qichun snakes populate this bold, lyrical novel, an extraordinary work of profound beauty by the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780060936235ISBN:0060936231
Description: Fair. No dust jacket as issued. Slight water mark to small area on 20% of book. Otherwise in great condition. Daily Shipping. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 528 p. Audience: General/trade. Topics Award Winners; China-Description and travel; Chinese; Fiction; General; Meaning (Philosophy) read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Perennial, New York, New York, U.S. A
Date Published: 2001
ISBN-13:9780060936235ISBN:0060936231
Description: Very Good. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. From the back of the book: 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 reprieve from death."...Gao fled Beijing into the remote mountains and ancient forest of Sichuan in southwest China. The result is Soul Mountain. 510 pgs. Book is in excellent condition. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 2001-11-01
ISBN-13:9780060936235ISBN:0060936231
Description: Very Good. VG, sticker else covers clean and crisp, small pencil note on endpage else interior is clean and bright, binding is tight, a very nice copy throughout. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this book supports the King County Library System Foundation. Thriftbooks and KCLSF have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Very good. Book has appearance of light use with no easily noticeable wear. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
"Gao Xingjian is the first, and only, Chinese author to win the Nobel prize for literature, which he won in 2000. He's primarily a playwright, but he's written a couple of novels, and Soul Mountain was mentioned by the Nobel committee as his magnum opus and the primary cause for the award. Thus, if my quest is to explore Chinese fiction before my move, this is an obvious pick.
In the early 1980s Gao -- who was already a semi-renowned literary figure and theater director in the underground art scene in Communist China -- was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. After the predictable existential crises racked his being, the cancer miraculously disappeared from his body. To this day no one knows if he was misdiagnosed to begin with, or if he experienced a miracle recovery. Nonetheless, he emerged a changed man, and took off on a sort of vision quest across rural China to find himself. Soul Mountain emerged from that journey as a scattershot literary travelogue and hazy exploration of Gao's various ideas of self.
This is high end stuff; the Nobel prize should be evidence enough for that. And the fact that all Gao's books are banned in China to this day indicates their continued relevance. Although not overtly political, Gao's view of the government and modern Chinese life comes through clearly. He fled for France permanently soon after returning from his trip, when he got word of his impending banishment to a work commune in the far west. Soul Mountain was originally only published in Taiwan, and it made little waves in the rest of the world until the committee surprised him in his quiet life in Paris in 2000. I'm glad it did. Soul Mountain is a profoundly amazing work."
"Gao's book is about the competing needs for solitude and company within the self and how indulging one, harms the other. Gao was a writer in Communist China who lost most of his counter-revolutionary works during the cultural revolution when he felt forced to burn them all or suffer the consequences. He was then diagnosed and upon returning to his doctor undiagnosed with cancer. Feeling he had a reprieve, he leaves Beijing to join to wander near the Lu river for a few months by himself and hopefully avoid the Communist government until the cultural revolution cools down. Soul Mountain is his fictionalized account of these months told from the perspective of I, You, He and She. He and She seem to change throughout the book, but overall could be different manifestations of Gao himself. As a traveler and a sometime solitude seeker, I appreciate Gao. I also appreciate why this book may have been given to me by my father, who knows me so well. This is not the quickest of reads but well worth it."
"First, let me say, this is NOT an easy read. Second, I would not have enjoyed this book had I not read this book during a course I was taking at a Humanities college (so I had help with its interpretation).
That being said, it is a 5* book all the way.
What is challenging, is it is a book in which the narrator starts off auto-biographically telling his life story emerging from post-Cultural Revolution China in the early 80s with a life threatening cancer and threat of imprisonment. When his diagnosis turns out to be false, he decides to flee Beijing and set out through rural china toward the metaphorical "Soul Mountain" which is an actual place in the book. The mountain is the symbol of the metaphorical search toward inner peace and meaning. This part of the book is eloquently written.
Where it becomes challenging is when the narrator begins to "split" to describe different aspects of his being by using different pronouns - I, he, she, etc. - as the novel evolves. These new inner characters simply appear in the story line, so it is distracting at first. However, the overall effect is much like that of multiple characters, except they are simply different inner perspectives.
This coupled with the rich Chinese history of the early 80s, a time when an identity of self was highly discouraged due to the ending of the Cultural Revolution and traditional Chinese mainstream values of greater good to the whole.
This is truly a work of genius by a man whose own imagination was held hostage by every corner of his country's culture, politics and religious tendencies not to mention his own personal security."
"I should get an award for finishing this book. I bought it in the Beijing airport in September and just completed it ! It was the most dfficult to understand novel I have ever read. I think that is because it was translated from Chinese, the author doesn't give the characters names, and it flows back and forth between real time and dream time (I think). Anyway, why did I read it and give it 4 stars ? I'm not sure. I just kept getting drawn back to it. It's like it has a life of its own. Can a book be haunted ? Well, also there were many references to places that my sister and I had visited. :)"
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