Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian (Chinese高行健, Pinyin Gao Xingjian, born January 4, 1940 in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province ) is a Chinese -born storyteller, translator, playwright, director, critic and artist of French nationality. In 2000 he received the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Career

Gao Xingjian was born on 4 January 1940 in Ganzhou ( Jiangxi province ) in eastern China. His father was a bank official and his mother an amateur actress. In early childhood, his interest in the theater and the writing was awakened by his mother. In 1962, he presented at the Institute of Foreign Languages ​​in Beijing a degree in French in from.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) he was sent for re-education in a camp. Later he was sent for five years to work in a country village where he could resume his literary activity in secret again.

In 1985, he received a DAAD scholarship for a one-year work stay in Berlin and learned the art collector Franz Armin Morat know. Similarly, in the West- Berlin Festival in 1985, he took Horizonte Festival of World Cultures ( No.3, 1985) in part. In 1987 he then moved over Freiburg to Paris. After the bloody crackdown of Chinese student movement in early May 1989 in the Tian -An- Men Square in Beijing, he criticized the massacre on French television. He resigned after 27 years of membership of the Communist Party of China (CPC ) and gave back his Chinese passport. He was granted his request for political asylum. In Paris, he earned his living by painting. Since 1998, Gao is a French citizen.

Nobel Prize ceremony

The awarding of the Nobel Prize came as a surprise to many sides, not least for Gao from China itself was argued, Gao does not play a role in the Chinese literary scene and was absolutely unknown in his home; one would prefer to characterize a living in China Chinese. He was a non-person.

Gao's Swedish translator Göran Malmqvist is a member of the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prize. Ten days before the award of the Nobel Prize changed his Swedish publisher Gao - from Forum to Atlantis. The Atlantis -Verlag belongs to a friend of Malmqvist and media reports have speculated that Malmqvist advance information about the upcoming award ceremony would have leaked.

Work

In addition to dramatic works, he is also the creator of novels. In his novel Soul Mountain, he describes a trip through the interior of China, a ghostly China, the China of the philosopher Lao Tzu, which is away from the " world of dust ". The One Man's Bible tells of the Cultural Revolution in China and their terrible and bloody consequences for the individual.

Publications (selection)

• Chezhan (Bus Stop), play, UA: 1983 in Beijing
• The One Man's Bible (Chinese一个 人 的 圣经/一个 人 的 圣经, Pinyin Yi gè řén de Shengjing 1999, Translated from the Chinese by Natascha Vittinghoff, Frankfurt / Main, Fischer Taschenbuch 2006); ISBN 3-596-15241-0.
• Soul Mountain ( Lingshan ) ( translation from the Chinese by Helmut Forster Laces and Marie- Luise Laces, Frankfurt / Main, Fischer Taschenbuch 2003); ISBN 3-596-15250- X.
• On the sea ( translation from the Chinese by Natascha Vittinghoff, Frankfurt / Main, Fischer Taschenbuch 2000); ISBN 3-596-15183- X.
• The Angel of my grandfather; Frankfurt, Fischer Taschenbuch, 2008 ISBN 978-3-596-15249-0
• So far only in English: Snow in August ( Snow in August ), 2004, Chinese University Press, Hong Kong, ISBN 978-962-996-068-1