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Book by Gao, Xingjian
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About the Author:
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'.
From Publishers Weekly:
Six stories, published in Chinese between 1983 and 1991, offer a sample of Nobel-winner Gao's sharp, poetic early work. In "The Temple," the unnamed narrator and his new bride alter their honeymoon plans to pause in a provincial town. Though the two are blissfully happy, they find the town's inhabitants and its Temple of Perfect Benevolence vaguely disquieting. A muted reference to the Cultural Revolution ("It all felt so different from the time when we were graduates sent to work in the countryside") may explain the unease. Gao (Soul Mountain; One Man's Bible) explores the simultaneous enormity and anonymity of death in "The Accident," when a man on a bicycle with an attached baby buggy rides, either carelessly or deliberately, into a bus. The man is killed, but his young son survives; a crowd forms, passing around rumors, while the cops take away the bus driver and the blood on the road congeals. The title story employs collages of memory and haunting daydreams to mourn the destruction of the narrator's grandfather's village. A "sparkling lake" has been paved over, and the river where the narrator and his grandfather used to fish is dry: "The sand murmurs that it wants to swallow everything. It has swallowed the riverbank and now wants to swallow the city along with your childhood memories and mine." Gao intends his stories to reveal "the actualization of language and not the imitation of reality" storytelling, in other words, is not his goal. These spare, evocative pieces bear that out; often the lovely prose (nicely translated by Lee) is reward enough.
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- PublisherHarperCollins (Australia)
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 0732278856
- ISBN 13 9780732278854
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages224
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Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather
Published by
HarperCollins Publishers Australia
(2004)
ISBN 10: 0732278856
ISBN 13: 9780732278854
Used
Paperback
Quantity: 1
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: Good. 172 pages. Cover worn. A collection of six unforgettable stor ies from Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian. Dealing with Gao's trademar k themes of relationships, family, the political scene in China a nd exploration of the self, these stories are by turns moving, be autiful and thought-provoking. With the exception of 'In an Insta nt', all the stories were written in China in the early 1980s and published in Chinese in a collection called Gei wo laoye mai yug an (Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather) by Lianhe Press in t aipei 1989. 'In an Instant' was written in Paris in October 1990 but not published until 1996 in the collection Zhoumo sichongzhou , after Soul Mountain had been published in early 1990. this is t he perfect first taste of the work of Gao Xingjian - short, sweet and highly accessible - something for those who have heard about the author but are unsure where to start. Seller Inventory # 1387o
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Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather : Stories
Published by
HarperCollins (Australia)
(2004)
ISBN 10: 0732278856
ISBN 13: 9780732278854
Used
PAPERBACK
Quantity: 1
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Book Description PAPERBACK. Condition: Good. 0732278856 Softcover with pictorial card covers, 172 pages; some light cover wear, slightly yellowed page edges and a few dog-eared pages; binding good. 0.0. Seller Inventory # SKUASH114
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