Revising his doctoral dissertation for the University of Cambridge, Quah (Chinese literature, Nanyang Technological U., Singapore) explores the work of Chinese-French playwright Gao Xongjian (b. 1940), the first Nobel Laureate in literature (2000) to write primarily in Chinese, and one of the most controversial figures artistically and politically in contemporary China. He broke from the social realism that had dominated China since the revolution in the early 1980s, and fled to the west in 1987. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)