Gao Xingjian

Gao Xingjian (born January 4, 1940) is a Chinese-born French novelist, playwright, and painter who pioneered absurdist drama in China before emigrating to France in 1987, where he became a citizen in 1997. His seminal novel Soul Mountain (1990), inspired by a journey along the Yangtze River following a false cancer diagnosis, blends memoir, fiction, and folklore, earning special citation in his 2000 Nobel Prize in Literature win for an oeuvre of universal validity and linguistic ingenuity. Between life and death (1998) is another notable work.