Description

Author: Gao Xingjian

Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian (b. 1940) is amongst the most challenging writers of the present era. He has probed the dynamics of Chinese and European literature and developed unique strategies for the writing of seventeen plays, two novels, a collection of short stories, and a collection of poems. He has also written two collections of criticism.

For his contributions to literature Gao has received several prestigious awards. In 1985 he was awarded the DAAD Fellowship in Berlin for six months, and in 1992 he was awarded the French title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in Paris. In the year 2000 within weeks, he was declared Nobel Laureate for Literature in Stockholm and Premio Letterario Feronia in Rome. In France he was feted with the award Chevalier de l’Ordre de Legion d’Honneur, and the City of Marseille declared that 2003 would be designated “L’anne Gao Xingjian”, a year that would be devoted to showcasing his achievements.

Translated by Mabel Lee

Mabel Lee is an adjunct professor of Chinese studies at the University of Sydney and an honorary professor of translation at the Open University of Hong Kong. Her research field is modern Chinese intellectual history and literature, and she is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has published extensively on Lu Xun and 2000 Nobel Laureate Gao Xingjian and has translated Gao’s Soul Mountain (2000), One Man’s Bible (2002), Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (2004), and The Case for Literature (2006/7). From the late 1980s until 2000 she was co-editor of the University of Sydney East Asian Series.