Buying a Fishing Rod For My Grandfather.

XINGJIAN, Gao.

$375.00

Item Number: 138015

New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2004.

First American edition of the author’s first collection of short stories published in English. Octavo, original boards. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “Pour ____ ____ Gao Xingjian Paris le 20 Octobre 2006.” Fine in a fine dust jacket. Jacket design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich. Translated from the Chinese by Mabel Lee.

These six stories by Nobel Prize winner Gao Xingjian transport the reader to moments where the fragility of love and life, and the haunting power of memory, are beautifully unveiled. In "The Temple," the narrator's acute and mysterious anxiety overshadows the delirious happiness of an outing with his new wife on their honeymoon. In "The Cramp," a man narrowly escapes drowning in the sea, only to find that no one even noticed his absence. In the titlestory, the narrator attempts to relieve his homesickness only to find that he is lost in a labyrinth of childhood memories. “[Gao’s] narrators walk as if in a dream through a private landscape of memory and sensation” (Boston Globe).