I completely missed the Noble Prize winner’s birthday yesterday. I bought Soul Mountain in 2001, following a conversation with some new work friends about him. I had just moved to Washington, DC and I think I bought it at the Barnes and Noble in Union Station. Later, I bought One Man’s Bible from the now defunct Atlantic Books.

As a writer, he reminds me of John Fowles, or at least Soul Mountain does. Xingjian breaks the fourth wall, much like Fowles does in The French Lieutenant’s Woman and the autobiographical center of Soul Mountain seems to me to resemble an older version of the young man from The Magus (still a favorite of mine).