SOURCE: Wu, Fatima. Review of Soul Mountain, by Gao Xingjian. World Literature Today 75, no. 1 (winter 2001): 101.

In the following review, Wu explores Gao's narrative voice and the theme of the collective search for the meaning of life in Soul Mountain.

Gao Xingjian was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1982. Faced with imminent death, he began to gorge himself with sumptuous food and to immerse himself in reading in an old graveyard in a Beijing suburb. However, a second examination revoked the first diagnosis, and Gao was then returned to the human world. It was at this time that he left the city of Beijing to begin his 15,000-kilometer journey from central China to the east coast. This journey, which lasted over five months, gave birth to the book Soul Mountain.

The work is an account of Gao's odyssey, or a pagan's Pilgrim's Progress. In eighty-one chapters covering over five hundred...