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A review by ahsansenan
Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian
5.0
Soul Mountain is rooted in a journey that Gao made through the wilderness of China. A mis-diagnosis of lung cancer, the ailment that killed his father, forced him to confront what he believed to be his imminent death. He spent 2 weeks hanging around graveyards, reading books and eating the best food he could afford. Shortly afterward, he came under attack in a Communist Party campaign against 'spiritual pollution'. Facing the threat of labor camp, he fled for the mountains and spent 5 months roaming around 1,500 kilometers of the countryside until it was safe to return to the capital.
Soul Mountain is a historically- and culturally-aware travel memoir interspersed with magical and fantastical flights of fancy, moralistic musings, reportage on rural folklore and fables, the I,the you, and the we.
There is no plot. No character development. Only loose threads connecting each of the 81 chapters. Much like Gao's travels, without any purpose or rush, the pages of this book meanders, not always linearly. This is rural China, bureaucratic, bucolic, barbaric, and benign, all superimposed on top of one another.
Soul Mountain is a historically- and culturally-aware travel memoir interspersed with magical and fantastical flights of fancy, moralistic musings, reportage on rural folklore and fables, the I,the you, and the we.
There is no plot. No character development. Only loose threads connecting each of the 81 chapters. Much like Gao's travels, without any purpose or rush, the pages of this book meanders, not always linearly. This is rural China, bureaucratic, bucolic, barbaric, and benign, all superimposed on top of one another.