Despite the recent glut of novels and autobiographies detailing tri-generational family sagas set in China, Gao?s latest offering is of a different genre. A fictionalised account of the author?s life, the book is a self-conscious, articulate account of the desperate struggle for freedom and dignity during China?s Cultural Revolution.

In a Hong Kong hotel, shortly before the 1997 handover, an anonymous writer recalls his previous life in Beijing, amid the horrors of the Cultural Revolution. In an atmosphere of all-pervasive paranoia, the sexual act becomes alternately political defiance or temporary escape ? a desperate attempt to connect with one?s emotions and sexual partner. In this bleak society, there is little room for sentiment or tenderness, especially within lovemaking, which seems divorced from pleasure. Gao?s writer-protagonist struggles to undo the ties that bind him to his hated country and strives to hold on to his fragile freedom to create and express.

Gao?s writing is both brave and honest. He does not shy away from detailing his own protagonist?s participation in the notorious denunciations of the time. No one was safe and likewise, no one could be certain of his or her innocence. A tiny mistake or lapse in concentration ? such as not shouting slogans loudly enough or unintentionally defacing a newspaper picture of Mao ? was enough to send people to the labour camps.

At times, the novel reads like a retelling of Orwell?s 1984, and it is disconcerting to realise that this is very far from fantasy.

Gao?s writer is neither hero nor martyr, and he reveals with excruciating clarity the price to be paid for freedom and life ? for in a quest for self-preservation, the writer betrayed both his principles and his friends.

Though the lonely protagonist longs for human contact, he understands that it is not possible for him, for it would mean sacrificing his hard-won independence. ?You are your own God and follower,? muses the writer. ?You do not sacrifice yourself for others, so you do not expect others to sacrifice themselves for you, and this is the epitome of fairness.?

As in life, One Man?s Bible offers no easy conclusions. Gao?s writer escapes to the West and determinedly forgets his former life but, as in China, struggles to make any real connection with other people. Though he finds success and freedom in his new life, his former existence provides the faces that haunt his dreams. Despite his renunciation of the past, a German Jewish lover persuades him to talk about Beijing. His retelling is at first reluctant and must be prized out, but when she leaves him he finds he is driven to continue the story.

It?s not an easy book to read, but it is challenging and worthwhile. As a meditation on memory and consciousness it is profound and moving, while as a personal history it is shocking.