Gao Xingjian
An important and critical aspect of, and influence on the novel was the political and cultural environment in which it was written. The novel was begun in 1982, shortly after the ending of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Additionally, traditional Chinese culture promotes the Confucian ideology of dissolution of the self and promotion of subservience and conformity. The combination of traditional conformity and the "self-sacrificing" ideology of the Chinese Communist Revolution effectively silenced artists and writers who depended on their creativity of self-expression. Thus, under these circumstances, Gao Xingjian left his native country to finish "Soul Mountain" in 1989 in Paris, and Mabel Lee describes the novel as "a literary response to the devastation of the self".