Book description
From China's first-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature comes
an exquisite book of fictions, none of which has ever been published
before in English.
A young couple on honeymoon visit a beautiful temple up in the
mountains, and spend the day intoxicated by the tranquillity of the
setting; a swimmer is paralysed by a sudden cramp and finds himself
stranded far out to sea on a cold autumn day; a man reminisces about his
beloved grandfather, who used to make his own fishing rods from lengths
of crooked bamboo straightened over a fire…
Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft
afterglow of memory and nostalgia, these stories hum with simplicity and
wisdom - and will delight anyone who loved Gao's bestselling novels,
Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible. Praise for Buying a Fishing Rod for
My Grandfather:
'Lyrical and plain, descriptively compelling and as brilliantly
ordinary as Chekhov's stories of the 1890s, the six stories in this
collection beautifully demonstrate Gao's proposition that fiction is
'the actualisation of language and not the imitation of reality.' His
writing, here as elsewhere, is simple and profound.' Daily Telegraph
'Xingjian is an author who can communicate depths of feeling through
snatches of conversation and single, well-chosen images . . . Achieves
the understated, expressive concision that defines China's singular
contribution to modern literature ' Guardian
'Like the expansive, ink-washed abstract paintings reproduced in his
recently published monograph, Return to Painting, Xingjian's stories
brim with sensual clarity that has as its counterpoint an irresistible
psychological confusion.' January Magazine
Praise for Gao Xingjian:
'Brilliant and poetic, keen and original … Gao's ambition is to
transcend the specifics of time and place, to write a meditation on
literature itself and its ability to reveal the raging, brutal,
brilliant beast that is mankind itself … [His work] burns with a
powerfully individualistic fire of intelligence and depth of feeling.'
New York Times Gao Xingjian was born in 1940 in Jiangxi province in
eastern China, and has lived in France since 1987. Gao is considered an
artistic innovator in his native China, both in the visual arts and in
literature. He is that rare multi-talented artist who excels as a
novelist, playwright, essayist, director and painter. Two novels, the
internationally best-selling 'Soul Mountain' and 'One Man's Bible', are
available in English, as well as a volume of his art entitled 'Return to
Painting'.
