Finding 'true life' in literature

 

“It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.” – Gao Xingjian

Born in China on Jan. 4, 1940 Nobel Prize-winning author and critic Gao now makes his home in Paris where he is a screenwriter, stage director, and celebrated painter.  This past year he was selected by the  Royal Society of Literature for its prestigious "International Writer" award. 

 

In China he wrote two of his best-known plays Signal Alarm and Bus Stop while holding down the resident playwright post at the Beijing People's Art Theatre (from 1981 to 1987). Influenced by European theatrical models, his work there gained him a reputation as a popular avant-garde writer.  

             

                               

But Gao left China after running afoul of government officials for writing plays that were critical of their policies.  He said he feels that many writers “simply have to believe in themselves” in order to  carry on with what they are doing, even when they are receiving little or no support for their efforts.   

 

“In the history of literature there are many great enduring works which were not published in the lifetimes of the authors,” he explained.   “If the authors had not achieved self-affirmation while writing, how could they have continued to write?”