Buying a Fishing Rod for my Grandfather

From China's first-ever winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature comes an exquisite book of fictions, none of which has ever been published before in English.

A young couple on honeymoon visit a beautiful temple up in the mountains, and spend the day intoxicated by the tranquillity of the setting; a swimmer is paralysed by a sudden cramp and finds himself stranded far out to sea on a cold autumn day; a man reminisces about his beloved grandfather, who used to make his own fishing rods from lengths of crooked bamboo straightened over a fire…

Blending the crisp immediacy of the present moment with the soft afterglow of memory and nostalgia, these stories hum with simplicity and wisdom – and will delight anyone who loved Gao's bestselling novels, Soul Mountain and One Man's Bible.

Reviews

Praise for Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather:

‘Lyrical and plain, descriptively compelling and as brilliantly ordinary as Chekhov’s stories of the 1890s, the six stories in this collection beautifully demonstrate Gao’s proposition that fiction is ‘the actualisation of language and not the imitation of reality.’ His writing, here as elsewhere, is simple and profound.’ Daily Telegraph

‘Xingjian is an author who can communicate depths of feeling through snatches of conversation and single, well-chosen images . . . Achieves the understated, expressive concision that defines China's singular contribution to modern literature ’ Guardian

‘Like the expansive, ink-washed abstract paintings reproduced in his recently published monograph, Return to Painting, Xingjian's stories brim with sensual clarity that has as its counterpoint an irresistible psychological confusion.’ January Magazine

Praise for Gao Xingjian:

'Brilliant and poetic, keen and original … Gao's ambition is to transcend the specifics of time and place, to write a meditation on literature itself and its ability to reveal the raging, brutal, brilliant beast that is mankind itself … [His work] burns with a powerfully individualistic fire of intelligence and depth of feeling.' New York Times

About the author

Gao Xingjian was born in 1940 in Jiangxi province in eastern China, and has lived in France since 1987. Gao is considered an artistic innovator in his native China, both in the visual arts and in literature. He is that rare multi-talented artist who excels as a novelist, playwright, essayist, director and painter. Two novels, the internationally best-selling ‘Soul Mountain’ and ‘One Man's Bible’, are available in English, as well as a volume of his art entitled ‘Return to Painting’.