Soul Mountain

Overview: NOBEL Prize of Literature GAO XINGJIAN (whose name is pronounced gow shing-jen) is a playwright and celebrated painter as well as a fiction writer and critic. Born in 1940 in Jiangxi province in eastern China, he studied in state schools, earned a university degree in French in Beijing, and embarked on a life of letters. Choosing exile in 1987, he settled in Paris, where he completed Soul Mountain two years later. In 1992 he was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He is the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.