One Man's Bible

(Paperback)

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the eagerly-awaited new novel from Gao Xingjian, the first Chinese recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.Full of wisdom, wit, pain and redemption, One Man's Bible is a book which sets out to make sense of the horror that was China's Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). there has been much written about this period, and the Chinese people are often portrayed as innocent victims, powerless to stop the government stamping any cultural pursuit that wasn't state-sanctioned. Gao argues however that everyone - from paddy-field worker to government cadre - was complicit and should take responsibility for what happened.Some 30 years later, the book's main character reflects on the tragedy and absurdity which swept through China under Mao's rule, recalling the endless rounds of recrimination and the policing of every word and deed - how nothing that did not conform to the mandates of the state or the Party was allowed and anyone who dared speak out was denounced, imprisoned or killed. He traces his perilous path through those times and examines every aspect of his life.

Author Bio

Gao Xingjian was born in 1940, in China. During the 1960s and 1970s, he wrote a number of works of prose, plays and poems, aware that what he wrote could not be published, since they failed to comply with the government's strict guidelines. He was finally able to publish a substantial number of works during the 1980s, but when a ban was imposed on the performance of his play Bus Stop in 1983, Gao finally fled Beijing and began the long journey of a political refugee which forms the basis of Soul Mountain and One Mans Bible. He now lives in Paris, where he writes and paints, and is a French citizen.