Novel
Soul Mountain
靈山
Gao Xingjian · 1990
Synopsis
A writer, who says “I”, has just learned that the lung cancer he had been diagnosed with was only a mistake; he leaves the city and sets off across Sichuan, towards the Yangtze, to meet the Qiang, the Miao and the Yi. Another traveller, referred to as “you”, rucksack on his back, is looking for Lingshan, the mountain of the soul, of which a stranger told him on a train; he meets a tormented woman, “she”, and amuses her with invented stories. The book blends travel narrative, legends gathered along the way and fragments.
Context
Gao Xingjian began the book in the summer of 1982 and finished it in Paris in 1989. After one of his plays was banned in 1986, he made, according to the Nobel Foundation, a ten-month walk in Sichuan to escape harassment; Britannica speaks of a journey along the Yangtze. The novel was published in Taipei, by Lianjing, in 1990 (in 1989 according to Britannica), and was banned in mainland China. Göran Malmqvist translated it into Swedish in 1992, Noël and Liliane Dutrait into French in 1995, and Mabel Lee into English in 2000.
Who it is for
A very long novel, made up of fragments, legends and alternating voices; it exists in French and in English.
Prizes and reception
Britannica reports that the Swedish Academy in 2000 praised a work of universal scope and bitter lucidity.
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