Gao Xingjian is a novelist, dramatist, poet, and painter, perhaps most well known for his novel Lingshan [Soul Mountain] (1990); he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000. Gao has produced an extensive body of literature, including several short stories, over twenty-five plays, numerous essays, a number of translations, and two novels.
Born in 1940 in Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, Gao grew up in a prosperous and intellectual family. Gao's father was a senior bank official, and his mother graduated from a missionary school and later became an active member of a Christian Drama Troupe. Mostly through his mother, Gao became interested in European literature and drama, a passion that continued to develop throughout his l…
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