SOURCE: Dahlburg, John-Thor. “Chinese Exile Gao Xingjian of France Gets Nobel Literature Prize.” Los Angeles Times (13 October 2000): A17.

In the following essay, Dahlburg provides an overview of Gao's literary career in terms of his controversial reception by the Chinese government.

After nearly a century of existence, the Nobel Prize in literature was awarded Thursday for the first time to a writer in the world's most-used language, dissident Chinese exile Gao Xingjian, whose works are banned in his native land.

Now a citizen of France, Gao's life and work mirror the tumult of modern China, while blending Chinese themes with narrative forms that originated in the West.

During the upheaval of Mao Tse-tung's 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, in which millions perished, the author was sent to political re-education camps and toiled for six years as an agricultural worker. During that chaotic period, he burned a suitcase filled with manuscripts to...