Reception
In a review published in 2000, after Gao's Nobel win, The New York Times said, "His 81 chapters are an often bewildering and considerably uneven congeries of forms: vignettes, travel writing, ethnographic jottings, daydreams, nightmares, recollections, conversations, lists of dynasties and archeological artifacts, erotic encounters, legends, current history, folklore, political, social and ecological commentary, philosophical epigrams, vivid poetical evocation and much else."
The Times continues: "A novel in theory, Soul Mountain is more nearly a collection of the musings, memories and poetic, sometimes mystical fantasies of a gifted, angry writer."
Publisher's Weekly called it Gao's "largest and perhaps most personal work."
The Yale Review of Books wrote: "Blazing a new trail for the Chinese novel, Gao Xinjian’s Soul Mountain combines autobiography, the supernatural, and social commentary."
The entry on the novel in Enotes notes: "While many critics have found Gao's inventive storytelling techniques to be the novel's most remarkable feature, others have found the novel to be overly self-indulgent and alienating to the reader."
Read more about this topic: Soul Mountain
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