Gao Xingjian is a Chinese émigré novelist, playwright, critic, painter, photographer, film director, and translator who in 2000 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an oeuvre of universal validity, bitter insights and linguistic ingenuity." He is also a noted translator, screenwriter, stage director, and a celebrated painter.
Gao's drama is considered to be fundamentally absurdist in nature and avant-garde in his native China. Absolute Signal was a breakthrough in Chinese experimental theatre. The Bus Stop and The Other Shore had their productions halted by the Chinese government, with the acclaimed Wild Man the last work of his to be publicly performed in China. He left the country in 1987 and his plays from The Other Shore onward increasingly centered on universal concerns, but his 1989 play Exile angered both the government for its depiction of China and the overseas democracy movement for its depiction of intellectuals. In 1998, he was granted French citizenship.