One Man's Bible

From the Nobel Prize–winning author of Soul Mountain, a "sweeping panorama of history and the suffering and reconciliation that underlie it" (The Washington Post Book World).

One Man's Bible is a fictionalized account of Gao Xingjian's life under the oppressive totalitarian regime of Mao Tse-tung during the period of the Cultural Revolution and its aftermath. Whether in the "beehive" offices in Beijing or in isolated rural towns, daily life everywhere is riddled with paranoia and fear, as revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries, and government propaganda turn citizens against one another. It is a place where a single sentence spoken ten years earlier can make one an enemy of the state. Gao evokes the spiritual torture of political and intellectual repression in graphic detail, including the heartbreaking betrayals he suffers in his relationships with women and men alike.

One Man's Bible is a profound meditation on the essence of writing, on exile, on the effects of political oppression on the human spirit, and how the human spirit can triumph.

"Unforgettable . . . Burns with a powerfully individualistic fire of intelligence and depth of feeling." —The New York Times

"[Gao] paints a stark, unforgiving picture of the results of Mao's regime and of the Cultural Revolution." —The Denver Post

"Dreamlike . . . elegant and haunting." —The Boston Globe

"Conveys that profound sense of dislocation human beings can sometimes feel when one looks back on one's own life." —The Baltimore Sun