Word: xingjian
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When it announced in October that Gao Xingjian had become the first Chinese author to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy singled out for particular praise his "great novel" "Soul Mountain," calling it "one of those singular literary creations that seem impossible to compare with anything but themselves." Proving that fate sometimes smiles on publishers, an English rendition of "Soul Mountain" (HarperCollins; 510 pages; $27) was in the works well before the Nobel hullabaloo made its author an international celebrity, and has now arrived with the unexpected imprimatur of the Swedish Academy...
...Xingjian (China...
Ironically, the government almost invited such license as it became more and more lenient. Earlier this year, for example, it tolerated a flowering of experimental and unorthodox dramas. Playwright Gao Xingjian's Bus Stop presented a story about eight people awaiting a bus that never arrives. Conspicuously absent were all the trappings of conventional Chinese drama: plot, moral and exhortation. Meanwhile, thousands of citizens were flocking to a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, directed by Miller himself at Peking's prestigious Capital Theater. The spectators sympathized so warmly with Bourgeois Protagonist Willy Loman...