One Man's Bible

'Brilliant and poetic, keen and original...Gao has written a book drenched in the political turmoil in China. But his 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..."One Man's Bible" burns with a powerfully individualistic fire of intelligence and depth of feeling...Unforgettable.' New York Times

'An absorbing historical primer on the decades of Maoist terror...Both more personal and more political than its predecessor, "Soul Mountain", "One Man's Bible" is a Chinese variation on an important global literary theme: the desperate quest by those living under dictatorships of all kinds to escape the crushing forces of totalitarian collectivism.' TLS

'Everything a novel should be...Like all good novelists Gao creates a world, not as a kind of wallpaper or filling but as a place in which the protagonist suffers and sometimes is happy.' Literary Review

'Dreamlike, elegant and haunting.' Boston Globe