Archives | Authors | Xingjian Gao

Gao Xingjian: Nobel Prize 2000 France, China    PWF 2010

Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2000—“for an  oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity, which has opened new paths for the Chinese novel and drama”. For Gao, life is a process of fleeing—from political oppression, from others, even from oneself. “Once the self has been awakened, one cannot flee—this is the tragedy of modern man.”

Playwright, novelist, essayist and painter Gao Xingjian was born in 1940 in Ganzhou, in eastern China. His father worked for a bank, his mother was an actress—who guided her son towards painting and traditional Chinese theater. In 1962, Gao received a degree in French literature from the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute and subsequently was assigned work as an editor and translator at the Foreign Languages Press.

Refusing to conform to the Communist Party’s guidelines for literature, Gao wrote in secret—burning a suitcase full of manuscripts at the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution. Under investigation, he fled to a remote mountain village. Writing became his only salvation.

In 1975, Gao returned to Beijing and resumed his position at the Foreign Languages Press. In 1980, he began to see his writings published and was reassigned to work as a writer at the People’s Art Theater, where his avant-garde plays drew crowds, as well as the suspicion of the authorities. Once again, he fled—traveling to the source of Yangtze River, composing his great novel Soul Mountain, and eventually finding exile in Paris 1987.

“A writer does not speak as the spokesperson of the people or as the embodiment of righteousness. His voice is inevitably weak—but it is this weak voice that is most authentic.”

Gao Xingjian’s work includes: Soul Mountain, One Man’s Bible, Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather, The Other Shore, Ink Paintings, Return to Painting, After the Flood, The Case For Literature, and The Aesthetics of Creation, which is forthcoming.

Gao Xingjian lives in Paris.

 

Dramas and performances

Signal Alarm (1982)
Bus Stop (1983)
Wild Men, "Savages" (1985)
The Other Shore (1986)
Shelter the Rain (1981)
Dark City (1988)
Transition of Sheng-Sheng-Man (1989)
Escape (1990)
Death Sector / Between Life and Death (1991)
A Tale of Shan Hai Jing (1992)
Dialogue & Rhetorical / Dialogue and Rebuttal (1992)
Weekends Quartet / Weekend Quartet (1999)
Nighthawk / Nocturnal Wanderer(1999)
Snow in August (2000)
Collection (1995)

Fiction

Constellation in a Cold Night (1979)
Such a Pigeon called Red Lips (1984)
Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather (1986–1990)
Soul Mountain (1989)
One Man's Bible (1998)

Poem

Sky Burial (1986)

Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian: "Got rid of the constraints"

06.02.2009 Interviews

Gao Xingjian in conversation with Asia Source in New York City

Read more >

Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian: "Composing a narrative in Chinese ink"

06.02.2009 Articles

Article in The International Herald Tribune

Read more >

Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian: 'An artist must walk his own path'

06.02.2009 Articles

A review of Gao's paintings in The Herald Tribune

Read more >

Gao Xingjian_by Mike Clarke

Gao Xingjian: Living without 'isms'

19.01.2009 Interviews

Maya Jaggi, journalist for the Guardian, met Gao Xingjian

Read more >

Gao Xingjian_In conversation with Guillaume Basset

Gao Xingjian: I had to face facts

10.12.2008 Interviews

Gao Xingjian in conversation with Guillaume Basset

Read more >

Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian: Soul Mountain

10.12.2008 Readings

Chap 14: A fat, barely middle-aged woman comes

Read more >

Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian: Soul Mountain

10.12.2008 Readings

Chap 23: You say you had a dream, just now

Read more >




CZ | EN