Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian and His Novel Soul Mountain

In her article, "Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian and his Novel Soul Mountain," Mabel Lee introduces Gao Xingjian, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature of 2000. Lee is the translator of several of Gao's works from the Chinese into English, including the Nobel's main text of reference, Soul Mountain (first published in Chinese in 1990). Lee's article combines descriptions of Gao's biographical background and its relevance to his work and writing with a brief analysis of literary aspects of Gao's work based on tenets of the comparative literary and cultural studies approach. As is evident in Gao's texts, Lee explains that Gao refuses to enter political and ideological debates in or with his texts and that Gao, consequently, argues vehemently against the inroads on the individual in modern times wreaked by tyrannical politics, mob action, religious fundamentalism, and crass commercialism. For Gao the creation and production of literature represents the solitary act of the individual and thus the return to the author, in theory and practice. In the history of literature, of significance is the fact that this is the first time the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to an author on the basis of a body of work written in the Chinese language. Mabel Lee, "Nobel Laureate 2000 Gao Xingjian and his Novel Soul Mountain" page 2 of 6 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 2.3 (2000):