Soul Mountain

In awarding the 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature to Gao Xingjian, the Swedish Academy described Soul Mountain as “an odyssey in time and space through the Chinese countryside.” The New York Times celebrated the novel “not only for its magical tales, folkloric roots and eroticism but also for its patchwork of narrative styles, from poems and monologues to ballads and conversations.” Inspired by Gao’s true-life epic journey to freedom through the ancient forests of China — a five-month trek over 15,000 kilometers — Soul Mountain challenges conventions and lays bare the human condition.