Korean Title: Young-honeui San
Author: Gao Xingjian
Translator: Sang-hae Lee
Publisher: BookFolio
2-volume set

Important! Please read before you order!

>>>This book is written in Korean only. >>>This is a multi-unit set and the shipping cost will be adjusted to that of 2 books. To learn more about the shipping cost, please visit our Info Page and read Shipping Information. >>>You may purchase individual volume(s) instead of the entire set. To do so, please clearly state, in the Comments box during the check-out process, which volume(s) only you want to purchase. We will modify your order accordingly, after your order is submitted.

About This Book

Gao Xingjian was almost unknown in this country when he won this year's Nobel prize. Gao, who lives in exile in Paris, was embroiled in controversy in China in the 1980s because of his plays. This novel is his largest and perhaps most personal work. Around the time Gao's plays were arousing controversy, he was diagnosed with lung cancer falsely, as it turned out. The "detestable omniscient self" of the Gao-like narrator sharing these circumstances goes partly underground by getting out of Beijing and going to various underdeveloped regions of China. Officially, Gao is gathering folk songs and tales, but underneath that task we discern a desire to reconnect with the fate of his family, which, like so many others, was fragmented by the revolution. The book itself is narrated in two voices: a rational first person "I" and an emotional second person "you." Gao stays with park rangers, old friends and Daoist monks. The "you" wanders a more fantastic, otherworldly Chinese landscape, looking for Lingshan, the "soul mountain" of the title. To the second person is allotted a series of frenzied sexual encounters with a series of rebellious women. Within this baggy structure, there are repeated memories of the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, episodes concerning "wild men" (the Chinese equivalent of yeti), reflections on China's environmental degradation and comments on old ruins. Seeking out old singers and shamans like a connoisseur of extinct cultures, Gao has created a sui generis work, one that, in combining story, reminiscence, meditation and journalism, warily comes to terms with the shocks of both Maoism and capitalism.

Availability: Usually ships in 5~10 business days.