Matthew's Reviews > Soul Mountain

There are yet some months to go, but this thing has a veritable death-grip on “favorite read of the year” honors for me, in 2017. Part autobiographical novel, part episodic travelogue, part dream narrative, this is a book that ultimately defies accurate description (or at least deserves a better reviewer than I...), in which all of the elements cohere into one of the most unusual and profound of reading experiences for the patient reader.

This is a book of rare depth. I am vaguely reminded of Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival, or perhaps some of Hermann Hesse’s work, in the sense that Hesse’s characters often seem to me to be fragments of a shattered whole, rather than distinct beings in and of themselves. This is much more obvious and pronounced in this book, however, as Gao Xingjian experiments with his use of pronouns. “You” and “I” alternate taking center stage from chapter to chapter, each character on his own quest for some nameless spiritual fulfillment in the forests and mountains of southwest China, away from the oppressive realities and disappointments of human society (Gao himself had been inspired by a cancer scare, and was eager to escape a potential stint in a labor camp on account of his writings, which had been condemned by the Communist Party). This shifting of perspective is at times disorienting, but the use of the second-person point of view undeniably makes for a highly engaging and oneiric experience (for this reader, at least). A huge debt of gratitude is owed to The Swedish Academy for awarding this author the Nobel Prize for Literature and thus bringing him to a global audience, as well as to Mabel Lee, for her great achievement in translating the work. I can’t recommend this enough.