000			01607nam a22001697a 4500
005			20240305124545.0
020			_a0007119224
040			_cGESM
100	1		_aGao, Xingjian
240	0	0	_aSoul mountain
245	0	0	_aSoul mountain _cXingjian Gao; Mabel Lee
260			_aLondon _bFlamingo _c2001
300			_a510 p.
520			_aIn 1982 Chinese playwright, novelist and artist Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer, the very disease which had killed his father. For six weeks Gao inhabited a transcendental state of imminent death, treating himself to the finest foods he could afford while spending time reading in an old graveyard in the Beijing suburbs. But a secondary examination revealed there was no cancer - he had won a 'reprieve from death' and had been thrown back into the world of the living. Faced with a repressive cultural environment and the threat of a spell in a prison farm, Gao fled Beijing. He travelled first to the ancient forests of central China and from there to the east coast, passing through eight provinces and seven nature reserves, a journey of fifteen thousand kilometres over a period of five months. The result of this epic voyage of discovery is Soul Moutain. Interwoven into this picaresque journey are myriad stories and countless memorable characters - from venerable Daoist masters and Buddhist monks and nuns to mythical Wild Men; deadly Qichun snakes to farting buses. Conventions are challenged, preconceptions are thwarted and the human condition, with all its foibles and triumphs, is laid bare.
653			_aMeaning (Philosophy) _aFiction
942			_cBK
999			_c4540 _d4540