Gao
Xingjian

Gao Xingjian (born January 4, 1940, Ganzhou, Jiangxi province, China) is a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, and critic who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature “for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity.” He is also renowned as a stage director and as an artist.

Gao was educated in state schools and from 1957 to 1962 attended the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute, where he earned a degree in French. Persecuted as an intellectual during the Cultural Revolution, Gao was forced to destroy his early writings and was later sent to a re-education camp, where he endured nearly six years of hard labour. Afterward he was assigned by the government to work at the Foreign Languages Press. He became a translator but was unable to publish his work or travel abroad until 1979.

Gao first gained critical recognition with the publication of the novella Hanye zhong de xingchen (1980; “Stars on a Cold Night”). In 1981 he became a resident playwright with the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, and in 1982 his first play, Juedui xinhao (Alarm Signal), written in collaboration with Liu Huiyuan, was performed.