The 73-year-old told the BBC’s Helier Cheung, in a rare interview, that he felt as though he had been through three lives.

Gao Xingjian became the first Chinese-born writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000. His win however, was ignored by China, where his works have been banned for years. He lived through China’s Cultural Revolution, where he was forced to burn his writings in secret to avoid persecution.