Not Enough "there" there, 26 Dec 2007
Without retelling the story as other reviewers have already done, I would rather alert other potential readers to the success/failure of the book.
There are a few effective pieces within the story but there are too many rambling travelogue pieces that really didn't engage me. The book fails as a novel and fails as a memoir, hence the 2 stars. The Wild Swans, which my wife made me read, was far superior. This seems flat in comparison.

China through Chinese eyes, 14 Sep 2007
While writing his dream-like novel, a gust of wind blew away the pages of the manuscript and Gao Xingjiang was forced to retrieve the sheets and put them together in random order with some missing altogether. At least, that is what it seems like. There is no coherent structure in Soul Mountain and no point in looking for one. It consists of a series of musings, reflections and anecdotes as the author wanders around the bleak hinterland of modern China, a country materially impoverished but historically rich. The novel is laced with the curious myths and legends of the past which even the insanity of the Mao years failed to extinguish, and it is through these tales that we get an insight, however blurred, into the soul of the Chinese nation. Although rambling and sometimes difficult this is no experimental novel. It is simply another way of looking at the world, through the eyes of a culture whose origins were not shaped by Greco-Roman classicism or Judaeo-Christian monotheism.

Plus another 5 for the translator, 18 Jul 2007
Translating a novel from one language to another is always fraught with difficulties, and I feel that in some ways in the case of Soul Mountain the translator came to a much better understanding of the novel than the author. The prose, structure and meandering quality of this book are what make it such a wonderful experience to read. It is a book I often go back to because I can pick it up and open it anywhere and find stimulating, often amusing always exceptional writing that does not for its effect rely heavily on what went before. My first reading, of course, was chronological, although, as the book itself often is not, this is moot. Nonetheless reading it was a joyful experience, and one that I repeat often. Not many books get to stay on my book shelf, this is one of them, it bears repeated reading, and with repeated reading you will find yourself spirited into a world of your own making with Gao Xingjian as your eccentric guide.

Pfffft!, 08 Jan 2007
Soul Mountain describes the search of an individual for his being at several levels. After the author more or less gets his life back when the diagnosis of lung cancer is found to be wrong, he tries to find life. The I-figure is travelling along the Yangtze river in search of glimpses of the past: primeval forests that have not yet been destroyed, people who still know the old folk songs, Daoist temples that are still functioning. But everywhere he encounters the ravages of modern day China: the Three Gorges Dam, people poaching pandas, bare and eroded mountains. There is also a "you" figure, another aspect of the I-figure, that is in search of the more spiritual and social/erotic aspects of life by his quest to find Soul mountain. During this quest he is accompanied (or should I say hampered) by the "she" figure, which is supposed to be the more feminine side of the character.

This book is a strange mixture of a travel diary, folk stories and philosophical explorations. The constant switching between the characters and the different aspects of the book made it difficult to get into the story. I liked the search for the old China, could hardly follow some of the philosophical insights into human relationships (is this maybe due to the huge cultural gap between the Chinese and European cultures?) and I (as a woman) absolutely hated the female part of the character. She is everything a woman is supposed to be in the eyes of certain extremely old-fashioned men: dependent, weak, whining, walking a mountain on high heels. Hello: this is the 21st century! Nowadays, there are plenty of strong, independent and interesting women around. I cannot imagine how this book won the author the Nobel Prize.

A Lucid Journey Through Maoist China, 25 May 2004
I'm scarcely inclined to give 5 stars (I don't like to use full marks in vain), but this book is one of those rare pieces of art that is as much an experience as a novel. The first word that springs to mind when reviewing this book, and probably the best way to describe it, is "lucid". There is a tranquility to the writing that I found so accomodating, and being a relatively slow reader I find that 400 pages plus can often drag, but it honestly never did with 'Soul Mountain'.

To talk content, this is one man's journey around China in exile, having been forced to rome the expansive lands of his home nation to avoid arrest from the communist police that take a distaste to "Spiritual Pollution", or free expression and creativity that is deemed in opposition to the Maoist regime. To call it a "travelogue", however, would be misleading - to use a cliche, it is as much a journey into the author's soul and psyche as a more literal journey. The pronouns used in reference to the author change, usually, with each chapter - usually alternating between "I" and "You" for the first half of the novel, and then later also breaking into "He" (he apparently does this to distance himself from certain aspects of his personality, as if both he and the reader are looking down on himself from above - and also because he is lonely). I personally enjoyed the "you" sections the most, as they are the more personal accounts of a relationship between the author and an unnamed woman (referred to as "she").

Ignore reviews that talk about it being too experimental - if no-one experiments, how can literature move forward? Also ignore comments that it is too hard to read - there is no real cohesion, and this may be confusing, but never hard - I never experienced the apathy I have with books that I consider hard going, such as Heller's "Catch 22". Read this book for the comforting, zen-like narrative that you will experience if you truly let yourself go with this book. Don't try to analyse or scrutinise it (the author often does that himself, anyway), and just enjoy this book for what it is: an autobiographical masterpiece from a truly deserving Nobel Prize winner.

Not Enough "there" there, 26 Dec 2007
Without retelling the story as other reviewers have already done, I would rather alert other potential readers to the success/failure of the book.
There are a few effective pieces within the story but there are too many rambling travelogue pieces that really didn't engage me. The book fails as a novel and fails as a memoir, hence the 2 stars. The Wild Swans, which my wife made me read, was far superior. This seems flat in comparison.

China through Chinese eyes, 14 Sep 2007
While writing his dream-like novel, a gust of wind blew away the pages of the manuscript and Gao Xingjiang was forced to retrieve the sheets and put them together in random order with some missing altogether. At least, that is what it seems like. There is no coherent structure in Soul Mountain and no point in looking for one. It consists of a series of musings, reflections and anecdotes as the author wanders around the bleak hinterland of modern China, a country materially impoverished but historically rich. The novel is laced with the curious myths and legends of the past which even the insanity of the Mao years failed to extinguish, and it is through these tales that we get an insight, however blurred, into the soul of the Chinese nation. Although rambling and sometimes difficult this is no experimental novel. It is simply another way of looking at the world, through the eyes of a culture whose origins were not shaped by Greco-Roman classicism or Judaeo-Christian monotheism.

Plus another 5 for the translator, 18 Jul 2007
Translating a novel from one language to another is always fraught with difficulties, and I feel that in some ways in the case of Soul Mountain the translator came to a much better understanding of the novel than the author. The prose, structure and meandering quality of this book are what make it such a wonderful experience to read. It is a book I often go back to because I can pick it up and open it anywhere and find stimulating, often amusing always exceptional writing that does not for its effect rely heavily on what went before. My first reading, of course, was chronological, although, as the book itself often is not, this is moot. Nonetheless reading it was a joyful experience, and one that I repeat often. Not many books get to stay on my book shelf, this is one of them, it bears repeated reading, and with repeated reading you will find yourself spirited into a world of your own making with Gao Xingjian as your eccentric guide.

Pfffft!, 08 Jan 2007
Soul Mountain describes the search of an individual for his being at several levels. After the author more or less gets his life back when the diagnosis of lung cancer is found to be wrong, he tries to find life. The I-figure is travelling along the Yangtze river in search of glimpses of the past: primeval forests that have not yet been destroyed, people who still know the old folk songs, Daoist temples that are still functioning. But everywhere he encounters the ravages of modern day China: the Three Gorges Dam, people poaching pandas, bare and eroded mountains. There is also a "you" figure, another aspect of the I-figure, that is in search of the more spiritual and social/erotic aspects of life by his quest to find Soul mountain. During this quest he is accompanied (or should I say hampered) by the "she" figure, which is supposed to be the more feminine side of the character.

This book is a strange mixture of a travel diary, folk stories and philosophical explorations. The constant switching between the characters and the different aspects of the book made it difficult to get into the story. I liked the search for the old China, could hardly follow some of the philosophical insights into human relationships (is this maybe due to the huge cultural gap between the Chinese and European cultures?) and I (as a woman) absolutely hated the female part of the character. She is everything a woman is supposed to be in the eyes of certain extremely old-fashioned men: dependent, weak, whining, walking a mountain on high heels. Hello: this is the 21st century! Nowadays, there are plenty of strong, independent and interesting women around. I cannot imagine how this book won the author the Nobel Prize.

A Lucid Journey Through Maoist China, 25 May 2004
I'm scarcely inclined to give 5 stars (I don't like to use full marks in vain), but this book is one of those rare pieces of art that is as much an experience as a novel. The first word that springs to mind when reviewing this book, and probably the best way to describe it, is "lucid". There is a tranquility to the writing that I found so accomodating, and being a relatively slow reader I find that 400 pages plus can often drag, but it honestly never did with 'Soul Mountain'.

To talk content, this is one man's journey around China in exile, having been forced to rome the expansive lands of his home nation to avoid arrest from the communist police that take a distaste to "Spiritual Pollution", or free expression and creativity that is deemed in opposition to the Maoist regime. To call it a "travelogue", however, would be misleading - to use a cliche, it is as much a journey into the author's soul and psyche as a more literal journey. The pronouns used in reference to the author change, usually, with each chapter - usually alternating between "I" and "You" for the first half of the novel, and then later also breaking into "He" (he apparently does this to distance himself from certain aspects of his personality, as if both he and the reader are looking down on himself from above - and also because he is lonely). I personally enjoyed the "you" sections the most, as they are the more personal accounts of a relationship between the author and an unnamed woman (referred to as "she").

Ignore reviews that talk about it being too experimental - if no-one experiments, how can literature move forward? Also ignore comments that it is too hard to read - there is no real cohesion, and this may be confusing, but never hard - I never experienced the apathy I have with books that I consider hard going, such as Heller's "Catch 22". Read this book for the comforting, zen-like narrative that you will experience if you truly let yourself go with this book. Don't try to analyse or scrutinise it (the author often does that himself, anyway), and just enjoy this book for what it is: an autobiographical masterpiece from a truly deserving Nobel Prize winner.

Wistful long prose poems, 17 Jan 2006
Gao Xinjian’s book is a wistful collection of writing. It is not so much a collection of short stories as a series of long prose poems. Each essay has no narrative structure, with beginning, middle and end. Instead the author describes scenes from ordinary lives, mundane but perhaps important moments for the characters involved. There are a honeymooning couple visiting a deserted temple, a day in the park, a swimmer with cramp, among other vignettes. In each case, the characters are glimpsed interacting with little apparent rhyme or reason as to why the story has chosen to access them at that particular moment of their day over any others. Their dialogue is often mundane and banal. The reader is consequently not being invited into a story, but rather simply to act as a voyeur into unremarkable moments in other people’s lives.
Although Gao is a beautiful writer, I have to admit that I just couldn’t get stuck in to this collection. The style doesn’t lend itself to involved reading, and my attention wandered easily. Though I often enjoy stories with no real narrative, they usually have some obvious theme or purpose. I struggled to see one in much Gao’s book. Nevertheless, he is obviously a skilled writer, and I would like to read more of his work, but, beyond the wistfulness of the style, I couldn’t find anything here to hold my attention. They were good as stand-alone prose poems, but it wasn’t the Nobel prize-winning stuff I had hoped for.

Crisp short stories, 11 May 2004
Gao Xingjian uses small events occurring in daily life such as the visit of a decaying temple by a young couple, a road accident involving a father and a his young child, a swimmer suffering from a sudden pain or conversation in a park to deal with topics which he cherishes: the lost innocence of youth, the quest for an environment ruined by modern architecture or the nostalgia for a lost tenderness that only a father or grandfather could provide. Often there is no plot in those short stories, but a simple succession of images, impressions, dreams and thoughts. An author well worth discovering.

Not Enough "there" there, 26 Dec 2007
Without retelling the story as other reviewers have already done, I would rather alert other potential readers to the success/failure of the book.
There are a few effective pieces within the story but there are too many rambling travelogue pieces that really didn't engage me. The book fails as a novel and fails as a memoir, hence the 2 stars. The Wild Swans, which my wife made me read, was far superior. This seems flat in comparison.

China through Chinese eyes, 14 Sep 2007
While writing his dream-like novel, a gust of wind blew away the pages of the manuscript and Gao Xingjiang was forced to retrieve the sheets and put them together in random order with some missing altogether. At least, that is what it seems like. There is no coherent structure in Soul Mountain and no point in looking for one. It consists of a series of musings, reflections and anecdotes as the author wanders around the bleak hinterland of modern China, a country materially impoverished but historically rich. The novel is laced with the curious myths and legends of the past which even the insanity of the Mao years failed to extinguish, and it is through these tales that we get an insight, however blurred, into the soul of the Chinese nation. Although rambling and sometimes difficult this is no experimental novel. It is simply another way of looking at the world, through the eyes of a culture whose origins were not shaped by Greco-Roman classicism or Judaeo-Christian monotheism.

Plus another 5 for the translator, 18 Jul 2007
Translating a novel from one language to another is always fraught with difficulties, and I feel that in some ways in the case of Soul Mountain the translator came to a much better understanding of the novel than the author. The prose, structure and meandering quality of this book are what make it such a wonderful experience to read. It is a book I often go back to because I can pick it up and open it anywhere and find stimulating, often amusing always exceptional writing that does not for its effect rely heavily on what went before. My first reading, of course, was chronological, although, as the book itself often is not, this is moot. Nonetheless reading it was a joyful experience, and one that I repeat often. Not many books get to stay on my book shelf, this is one of them, it bears repeated reading, and with repeated reading you will find yourself spirited into a world of your own making with Gao Xingjian as your eccentric guide.

Pfffft!, 08 Jan 2007
Soul Mountain describes the search of an individual for his being at several levels. After the author more or less gets his life back when the diagnosis of lung cancer is found to be wrong, he tries to find life. The I-figure is travelling along the Yangtze river in search of glimpses of the past: primeval forests that have not yet been destroyed, people who still know the old folk songs, Daoist temples that are still functioning. But everywhere he encounters the ravages of modern day China: the Three Gorges Dam, people poaching pandas, bare and eroded mountains. There is also a "you" figure, another aspect of the I-figure, that is in search of the more spiritual and social/erotic aspects of life by his quest to find Soul mountain. During this quest he is accompanied (or should I say hampered) by the "she" figure, which is supposed to be the more feminine side of the character.

This book is a strange mixture of a travel diary, folk stories and philosophical explorations. The constant switching between the characters and the different aspects of the book made it difficult to get into the story. I liked the search for the old China, could hardly follow some of the philosophical insights into human relationships (is this maybe due to the huge cultural gap between the Chinese and European cultures?) and I (as a woman) absolutely hated the female part of the character. She is everything a woman is supposed to be in the eyes of certain extremely old-fashioned men: dependent, weak, whining, walking a mountain on high heels. Hello: this is the 21st century! Nowadays, there are plenty of strong, independent and interesting women around. I cannot imagine how this book won the author the Nobel Prize.

A Lucid Journey Through Maoist China, 25 May 2004
I'm scarcely inclined to give 5 stars (I don't like to use full marks in vain), but this book is one of those rare pieces of art that is as much an experience as a novel. The first word that springs to mind when reviewing this book, and probably the best way to describe it, is "lucid". There is a tranquility to the writing that I found so accomodating, and being a relatively slow reader I find that 400 pages plus can often drag, but it honestly never did with 'Soul Mountain'.

To talk content, this is one man's journey around China in exile, having been forced to rome the expansive lands of his home nation to avoid arrest from the communist police that take a distaste to "Spiritual Pollution", or free expression and creativity that is deemed in opposition to the Maoist regime. To call it a "travelogue", however, would be misleading - to use a cliche, it is as much a journey into the author's soul and psyche as a more literal journey. The pronouns used in reference to the author change, usually, with each chapter - usually alternating between "I" and "You" for the first half of the novel, and then later also breaking into "He" (he apparently does this to distance himself from certain aspects of his personality, as if both he and the reader are looking down on himself from above - and also because he is lonely). I personally enjoyed the "you" sections the most, as they are the more personal accounts of a relationship between the author and an unnamed woman (referred to as "she").

Ignore reviews that talk about it being too experimental - if no-one experiments, how can literature move forward? Also ignore comments that it is too hard to read - there is no real cohesion, and this may be confusing, but never hard - I never experienced the apathy I have with books that I consider hard going, such as Heller's "Catch 22". Read this book for the comforting, zen-like narrative that you will experience if you truly let yourself go with this book. Don't try to analyse or scrutinise it (the author often does that himself, anyway), and just enjoy this book for what it is: an autobiographical masterpiece from a truly deserving Nobel Prize winner.

Wistful long prose poems, 17 Jan 2006
Gao Xinjian’s book is a wistful collection of writing. It is not so much a collection of short stories as a series of long prose poems. Each essay has no narrative structure, with beginning, middle and end. Instead the author describes scenes from ordinary lives, mundane but perhaps important moments for the characters involved. There are a honeymooning couple visiting a deserted temple, a day in the park, a swimmer with cramp, among other vignettes. In each case, the characters are glimpsed interacting with little apparent rhyme or reason as to why the story has chosen to access them at that particular moment of their day over any others. Their dialogue is often mundane and banal. The reader is consequently not being invited into a story, but rather simply to act as a voyeur into unremarkable moments in other people’s lives.
Although Gao is a beautiful writer, I have to admit that I just couldn’t get stuck in to this collection. The style doesn’t lend itself to involved reading, and my attention wandered easily. Though I often enjoy stories with no real narrative, they usually have some obvious theme or purpose. I struggled to see one in much Gao’s book. Nevertheless, he is obviously a skilled writer, and I would like to read more of his work, but, beyond the wistfulness of the style, I couldn’t find anything here to hold my attention. They were good as stand-alone prose poems, but it wasn’t the Nobel prize-winning stuff I had hoped for.

Crisp short stories, 11 May 2004
Gao Xingjian uses small events occurring in daily life such as the visit of a decaying temple by a young couple, a road accident involving a father and a his young child, a swimmer suffering from a sudden pain or conversation in a park to deal with topics which he cherishes: the lost innocence of youth, the quest for an environment ruined by modern architecture or the nostalgia for a lost tenderness that only a father or grandfather could provide. Often there is no plot in those short stories, but a simple succession of images, impressions, dreams and thoughts. An author well worth discovering.

Compelling but flawed, 03 Sep 2008
A strange, disturbing book, One Man's Bible flits somewhat uneasily between the China of the Cultural Revolution and the protaganist's sexual encounters in the West, decades later.
Written by a self-confessed 'carnival performer with language', Gao Xingjian's latest work is at once a novel of freedom and repression, whether political or sexual, and a philosophical tome on the art of writing itself.
If the subject matter alone makes for a difficult read, the style in which it is written compounds the problem. While the author's self-division into the 'he' of his early life (the work is apparently semi-autobiographical) and the 'you' of his later years is relatively simple to grasp, less easy it the disjointed narrative. The first few chapters follow a fairly regular pattern, alternating between the author's life as a young man in China and his encounter with a German woman, who had been raped as a child and who is now able to act as his muse, enabling him to reminisce on his past. However, this Margarethe disappears from the scene relatively early on, and we are left with a stretch of the novel that deals mainly, although apparently not always chronologically, with life in Mao's China. And then suddenly we find ourselves in Sydney, where the author is taking a young French woman for a walk in a national park. More strange still is the chapter in which the author has an imagined conversation with the dead Mao.
Perhaps this disjunction is intended as metaphor for the cultural dislocation experienced by a writer exiled in the West struggling to explain an alien past to a Western audience. Somehow, however, the recounting of the author's sexual conquests are never really explained in the context of the rest of the book, and it is unclear as to exactly what kind of a work Gao Xingjian is trying to write.
One Man's Bible is certainly a compelling read, if only for its strangeness, but whether it is deserving of the Nobel Prize is another matter. Although one reviewer has compared Gao Xingjian to W.G. Sebald, I would suggest that Sebald, with his fluidity of prose and ability to capture the ghosts of the past, would have been a more suitable winner.

Of course it is you!!, 06 Dec 2003
(Pardon me. This is not much of a review, but I found the ones already posted so revolting that I had to react immediately.)
4 not 5 stars because One Man's Bible lacks the uncanny zen-like qualities of the most wondrous parts of the deservedly noble-prize winning "Soul Mountain".
No this is no easy reading. It would be all too strange if a book about the devastations that a repressive regime (here: in the chinese cultural revolution) does to the human soul would be such a joy to read. Come across any easy reading about the holocaust lately?
If you can't stand the intensity of human feelings and hurt - go back to your Agatha Christie or whatever!

No it's me as well, 17 Oct 2003
I found this book incredibly hard to read. I think a lot of it must be down to the translation, as it was hard to work out which characters the author was referring to in a lot of it, and what was happening. I don't think you find out the name of the main character till about page 150 which doesn't help. I found the whole book incredibly vague and slow, which is a shame because it is such an interesting subject. This Nobel prize winner was not for me!

Perhaps It Is Me, 19 Oct 2002
The Nobel Prize for Literature is given to a writer for the body of work they have produced. I have wondered in the past if the circumstances under which an author wrote, and or the danger their writing placed them in ever played a role in their recognition as well. "One Man's Bible", by Gao Xingjian was a very trying book to wade through. I received a copy early and it took me almost 2 months to finally make my way through the work. This became a book I would read between others as opposed to a work I enjoyed enough to read for what it had to offer. The book is written as though it was produced as it came to the writer's mind, not organized, rather just a chronicle of a variety of thoughts and experiences.

There are a few issues which may detract from the possibility of enjoying this work including, my lack of knowledge regarding the various rebellions, revolutions, and counter revolutions that this tale chronicles. I am also unsure how easily the original work in Chinese translates in to English. Much of the persecution the author describes is familiar to other repressive regimes that were based in Soviet Russia, or a variety of European Countries. But even though the wretched behavior of whatever group in power exerts over the weak is appalling, I have a harder time getting involved with the work. It is not a lack of empathy, but a lack of knowledge or perhaps a lack of understanding of Chinese history and culture.

This author has clearly had an impact on the literary world, and he may or may not have been recognized with The Nobel Prize if he lived in a nation that permitted freedom of expression. I don't have that answer, and that is why I do not rate the book as a poor one.

The part I really did enjoy was a chapter when the author wrote about writing and why people in general and he in particular write. While this was interesting it was confined to a single chapter, and this was not enough to keep me interested for any great length of time.

Not Enough "there" there, 26 Dec 2007
Without retelling the story as other reviewers have already done, I would rather alert other potential readers to the success/failure of the book.
There are a few effective pieces within the story but there are too many rambling travelogue pieces that really didn't engage me. The book fails as a novel and fails as a memoir, hence the 2 stars. The Wild Swans, which my wife made me read, was far superior. This seems flat in comparison.

China through Chinese eyes, 14 Sep 2007
While writing his dream-like novel, a gust of wind blew away the pages of the manuscript and Gao Xingjiang was forced to retrieve the sheets and put them together in random order with some missing altogether. At least, that is what it seems like. There is no coherent structure in Soul Mountain and no point in looking for one. It consists of a series of musings, reflections and anecdotes as the author wanders around the bleak hinterland of modern China, a country materially impoverished but historically rich. The novel is laced with the curious myths and legends of the past which even the insanity of the Mao years failed to extinguish, and it is through these tales that we get an insight, however blurred, into the soul of the Chinese nation. Although rambling and sometimes difficult this is no experimental novel. It is simply another way of looking at the world, through the eyes of a culture whose origins were not shaped by Greco-Roman classicism or Judaeo-Christian monotheism.

Plus another 5 for the translator, 18 Jul 2007
Translating a novel from one language to another is always fraught with difficulties, and I feel that in some ways in the case of Soul Mountain the translator came to a much better understanding of the novel than the author. The prose, structure and meandering quality of this book are what make it such a wonderful experience to read. It is a book I often go back to because I can pick it up and open it anywhere and find stimulating, often amusing always exceptional writing that does not for its effect rely heavily on what went before. My first reading, of course, was chronological, although, as the book itself often is not, this is moot. Nonetheless reading it was a joyful experience, and one that I repeat often. Not many books get to stay on my book shelf, this is one of them, it bears repeated reading, and with repeated reading you will find yourself spirited into a world of your own making with Gao Xingjian as your eccentric guide.

Pfffft!, 08 Jan 2007
Soul Mountain describes the search of an individual for his being at several levels. After the author more or less gets his life back when the diagnosis of lung cancer is found to be wrong, he tries to find life. The I-figure is travelling along the Yangtze river in search of glimpses of the past: primeval forests that have not yet been destroyed, people who still know the old folk songs, Daoist temples that are still functioning. But everywhere he encounters the ravages of modern day China: the Three Gorges Dam, people poaching pandas, bare and eroded mountains. There is also a "you" figure, another aspect of the I-figure, that is in search of the more spiritual and social/erotic aspects of life by his quest to find Soul mountain. During this quest he is accompanied (or should I say hampered) by the "she" figure, which is supposed to be the more feminine side of the character.

This book is a strange mixture of a travel diary, folk stories and philosophical explorations. The constant switching between the characters and the different aspects of the book made it difficult to get into the story. I liked the search for the old China, could hardly follow some of the philosophical insights into human relationships (is this maybe due to the huge cultural gap between the Chinese and European cultures?) and I (as a woman) absolutely hated the female part of the character. She is everything a woman is supposed to be in the eyes of certain extremely old-fashioned men: dependent, weak, whining, walking a mountain on high heels. Hello: this is the 21st century! Nowadays, there are plenty of strong, independent and interesting women around. I cannot imagine how this book won the author the Nobel Prize.

A Lucid Journey Through Maoist China, 25 May 2004
I'm scarcely inclined to give 5 stars (I don't like to use full marks in vain), but this book is one of those rare pieces of art that is as much an experience as a novel. The first word that springs to mind when reviewing this book, and probably the best way to describe it, is "lucid". There is a tranquility to the writing that I found so accomodating, and being a relatively slow reader I find that 400 pages plus can often drag, but it honestly never did with 'Soul Mountain'.

To talk content, this is one man's journey around China in exile, having been forced to rome the expansive lands of his home nation to avoid arrest from the communist police that take a distaste to "Spiritual Pollution", or free expression and creativity that is deemed in opposition to the Maoist regime. To call it a "travelogue", however, would be misleading - to use a cliche, it is as much a journey into the author's soul and psyche as a more literal journey. The pronouns used in reference to the author change, usually, with each chapter - usually alternating between "I" and "You" for the first half of the novel, and then later also breaking into "He" (he apparently does this to distance himself from certain aspects of his personality, as if both he and the reader are looking down on himself from above - and also because he is lonely). I personally enjoyed the "you" sections the most, as they are the more personal accounts of a relationship between the author and an unnamed woman (referred to as "she").

Ignore reviews that talk about it being too experimental - if no-one experiments, how can literature move forward? Also ignore comments that it is too hard to read - there is no real cohesion, and this may be confusing, but never hard - I never experienced the apathy I have with books that I consider hard going, such as Heller's "Catch 22". Read this book for the comforting, zen-like narrative that you will experience if you truly let yourself go with this book. Don't try to analyse or scrutinise it (the author often does that himself, anyway), and just enjoy this book for what it is: an autobiographical masterpiece from a truly deserving Nobel Prize winner.

Wistful long prose poems, 17 Jan 2006
Gao Xinjian’s book is a wistful collection of writing. It is not so much a collection of short stories as a series of long prose poems. Each essay has no narrative structure, with beginning, middle and end. Instead the author describes scenes from ordinary lives, mundane but perhaps important moments for the characters involved. There are a honeymooning couple visiting a deserted temple, a day in the park, a swimmer with cramp, among other vignettes. In each case, the characters are glimpsed interacting with little apparent rhyme or reason as to why the story has chosen to access them at that particular moment of their day over any others. Their dialogue is often mundane and banal. The reader is consequently not being invited into a story, but rather simply to act as a voyeur into unremarkable moments in other people’s lives.
Although Gao is a beautiful writer, I have to admit that I just couldn’t get stuck in to this collection. The style doesn’t lend itself to involved reading, and my attention wandered easily. Though I often enjoy stories with no real narrative, they usually have some obvious theme or purpose. I struggled to see one in much Gao’s book. Nevertheless, he is obviously a skilled writer, and I would like to read more of his work, but, beyond the wistfulness of the style, I couldn’t find anything here to hold my attention. They were good as stand-alone prose poems, but it wasn’t the Nobel prize-winning stuff I had hoped for.

Crisp short stories, 11 May 2004
Gao Xingjian uses small events occurring in daily life such as the visit of a decaying temple by a young couple, a road accident involving a father and a his young child, a swimmer suffering from a sudden pain or conversation in a park to deal with topics which he cherishes: the lost innocence of youth, the quest for an environment ruined by modern architecture or the nostalgia for a lost tenderness that only a father or grandfather could provide. Often there is no plot in those short stories, but a simple succession of images, impressions, dreams and thoughts. An author well worth discovering.

Compelling but flawed, 03 Sep 2008
A strange, disturbing book, One Man's Bible flits somewhat uneasily between the China of the Cultural Revolution and the protaganist's sexual encounters in the West, decades later.
Written by a self-confessed 'carnival performer with language', Gao Xingjian's latest work is at once a novel of freedom and repression, whether political or sexual, and a philosophical tome on the art of writing itself.
If the subject matter alone makes for a difficult read, the style in which it is written compounds the problem. While the author's self-division into the 'he' of his early life (the work is apparently semi-autobiographical) and the 'you' of his later years is relatively simple to grasp, less easy it the disjointed narrative. The first few chapters follow a fairly regular pattern, alternating between the author's life as a young man in China and his encounter with a German woman, who had been raped as a child and who is now able to act as his muse, enabling him to reminisce on his past. However, this Margarethe disappears from the scene relatively early on, and we are left with a stretch of the novel that deals mainly, although apparently not always chronologically, with life in Mao's China. And then suddenly we find ourselves in Sydney, where the author is taking a young French woman for a walk in a national park. More strange still is the chapter in which the author has an imagined conversation with the dead Mao.
Perhaps this disjunction is intended as metaphor for the cultural dislocation experienced by a writer exiled in the West struggling to explain an alien past to a Western audience. Somehow, however, the recounting of the author's sexual conquests are never really explained in the context of the rest of the book, and it is unclear as to exactly what kind of a work Gao Xingjian is trying to write.
One Man's Bible is certainly a compelling read, if only for its strangeness, but whether it is deserving of the Nobel Prize is another matter. Although one reviewer has compared Gao Xingjian to W.G. Sebald, I would suggest that Sebald, with his fluidity of prose and ability to capture the ghosts of the past, would have been a more suitable winner.

Of course it is you!!, 06 Dec 2003
(Pardon me. This is not much of a review, but I found the ones already posted so revolting that I had to react immediately.)
4 not 5 stars because One Man's Bible lacks the uncanny zen-like qualities of the most wondrous parts of the deservedly noble-prize winning "Soul Mountain".
No this is no easy reading. It would be all too strange if a book about the devastations that a repressive regime (here: in the chinese cultural revolution) does to the human soul would be such a joy to read. Come across any easy reading about the holocaust lately?
If you can't stand the intensity of human feelings and hurt - go back to your Agatha Christie or whatever!

No it's me as well, 17 Oct 2003
I found this book incredibly hard to read. I think a lot of it must be down to the translation, as it was hard to work out which characters the author was referring to in a lot of it, and what was happening. I don't think you find out the name of the main character till about page 150 which doesn't help. I found the whole book incredibly vague and slow, which is a shame because it is such an interesting subject. This Nobel prize winner was not for me!

Perhaps It Is Me, 19 Oct 2002
The Nobel Prize for Literature is given to a writer for the body of work they have produced. I have wondered in the past if the circumstances under which an author wrote, and or the danger their writing placed them in ever played a role in their recognition as well. "One Man's Bible", by Gao Xingjian was a very trying book to wade through. I received a copy early and it took me almost 2 months to finally make my way through the work. This became a book I would read between others as opposed to a work I enjoyed enough to read for what it had to offer. The book is written as though it was produced as it came to the writer's mind, not organized, rather just a chronicle of a variety of thoughts and experiences.

There are a few issues which may detract from the possibility of enjoying this work including, my lack of knowledge regarding the various rebellions, revolutions, and counter revolutions that this tale chronicles. I am also unsure how easily the original work in Chinese translates in to English. Much of the persecution the author describes is familiar to other repressive regimes that were based in Soviet Russia, or a variety of European Countries. But even though the wretched behavior of whatever group in power exerts over the weak is appalling, I have a harder time getting involved with the work. It is not a lack of empathy, but a lack of knowledge or perhaps a lack of understanding of Chinese history and culture.

This author has clearly had an impact on the literary world, and he may or may not have been recognized with The Nobel Prize if he lived in a nation that permitted freedom of expression. I don't have that answer, and that is why I do not rate the book as a poor one.

The part I really did enjoy was a chapter when the author wrote about writing and why people in general and he in particular write. While this was interesting it was confined to a single chapter, and this was not enough to keep me interested for any great length of time.

Not Enough "there" there, 26 Dec 2007
Without retelling the story as other reviewers have already done, I would rather alert other potential readers to the success/failure of the book.
There are a few effective pieces within the story but there are too many rambling travelogue pieces that really didn't engage me. The book fails as a novel and fails as a memoir, hence the 2 stars. The Wild Swans, which my wife made me read, was far superior. This seems flat in comparison.

China through Chinese eyes, 14 Sep 2007
While writing his dream-like novel, a gust of wind blew away the pages of the manuscript and Gao Xingjiang was forced to retrieve the sheets and put them together in random order with some missing altogether. At least, that is what it seems like. There is no coherent structure in Soul Mountain and no point in looking for one. It consists of a series of musings, reflections and anecdotes as the author wanders around the bleak hinterland of modern China, a country materially impoverished but historically rich. The novel is laced with the curious myths and legends of the past which even the insanity of the Mao years failed to extinguish, and it is through these tales that we get an insight, however blurred, into the soul of the Chinese nation. Although rambling and sometimes difficult this is no experimental novel. It is simply another way of looking at the world, through the eyes of a culture whose origins were not shaped by Greco-Roman classicism or Judaeo-Christian monotheism.

Plus another 5 for the translator, 18 Jul 2007
Translating a novel from one language to another is always fraught with difficulties, and I feel that in some ways in the case of Soul Mountain the translator came to a much better understanding of the novel than the author. The prose, structure and meandering quality of this book are what make it such a wonderful experience to read. It is a book I often go back to because I can pick it up and open it anywhere and find stimulating, often amusing always exceptional writing that does not for its effect rely heavily on what went before. My first reading, of course, was chronological, although, as the book itself often is not, this is moot. Nonetheless reading it was a joyful experience, and one that I repeat often. Not many books get to stay on my book shelf, this is one of them, it bears repeated reading, and with repeated reading you will find yourself spirited into a world of your own making with Gao Xingjian as your eccentric guide.

Pfffft!, 08 Jan 2007
Soul Mountain describes the search of an individual for his being at several levels. After the author more or less gets his life back when the diagnosis of lung cancer is found to be wrong, he tries to find life. The I-figure is travelling along the Yangtze river in search of glimpses of the past: primeval forests that have not yet been destroyed, people who still know the old folk songs, Daoist temples that are still functioning. But everywhere he encounters the ravages of modern day China: the Three Gorges Dam, people poaching pandas, bare and eroded mountains. There is also a "you" figure, another aspect of the I-figure, that is in search of the more spiritual and social/erotic aspects of life by his quest to find Soul mountain. During this quest he is accompanied (or should I say hampered) by the "she" figure, which is supposed to be the more feminine side of the character.

This book is a strange mixture of a travel diary, folk stories and philosophical explorations. The constant switching between the characters and the different aspects of the book made it difficult to get into the story. I liked the search for the old China, could hardly follow some of the philosophical insights into human relationships (is this maybe due to the huge cultural gap between the Chinese and European cultures?) and I (as a woman) absolutely hated the female part of the character. She is everything a woman is supposed to be in the eyes of certain extremely old-fashioned men: dependent, weak, whining, walking a mountain on high heels. Hello: this is the 21st century! Nowadays, there are plenty of strong, independent and interesting women around. I cannot imagine how this book won the author the Nobel Prize.

A Lucid Journey Through Maoist China, 25 May 2004
I'm scarcely inclined to give 5 stars (I don't like to use full marks in vain), but this book is one of those rare pieces of art that is as much an experience as a novel. The first word that springs to mind when reviewing this book, and probably the best way to describe it, is "lucid". There is a tranquility to the writing that I found so accomodating, and being a relatively slow reader I find that 400 pages plus can often drag, but it honestly never did with 'Soul Mountain'.

To talk content, this is one man's journey around China in exile, having been forced to rome the expansive lands of his home nation to avoid arrest from the communist police that take a distaste to "Spiritual Pollution", or free expression and creativity that is deemed in opposition to the Maoist regime. To call it a "travelogue", however, would be misleading - to use a cliche, it is as much a journey into the author's soul and psyche as a more literal journey. The pronouns used in reference to the author change, usually, with each chapter - usually alternating between "I" and "You" for the first half of the novel, and then later also breaking into "He" (he apparently does this to distance himself from certain aspects of his personality, as if both he and the reader are looking down on himself from above - and also because he is lonely). I personally enjoyed the "you" sections the most, as they are the more personal accounts of a relationship between the author and an unnamed woman (referred to as "she").

Ignore reviews that talk about it being too experimental - if no-one experiments, how can literature move forward? Also ignore comments that it is too hard to read - there is no real cohesion, and this may be confusing, but never hard - I never experienced the apathy I have with books that I consider hard going, such as Heller's "Catch 22". Read this book for the comforting, zen-like narrative that you will experience if you truly let yourself go with this book. Don't try to analyse or scrutinise it (the author often does that himself, anyway), and just enjoy this book for what it is: an autobiographical masterpiece from a truly deserving Nobel Prize winner.