The protagonist of this story is a Chinese writer who, through a stranger, is shown his destiny, discovering the existence of the Mountain of the Soul. This is how he sets out to dedicate his life to finding this mountain in order to conquer it and reveal its secrets, surrendering himself to his walk, to the road, to the dust of the vehicles, to the fables of the old inhabitants of the villages and to the reverie that fills the mists of the high peaks. A long journey, where the author goes in pursuit of a goal as sublime as it is unattainable: to decipher the meaning of our identity.

The novel begins with two narrators alternating throughout the book, one in second person and the other in first person, the two are traveling through China, one is looking for a mountain he has never seen but that someone named him along the way, starting his journey and search for this. I find it very exciting as it shows us the whole journey through the different villages and towns of China, showing the cultures, customs, in general, the different aspects of the oriental culture that I think for many of us is very unknown. He describes the landscapes to perfection, this is done in a very exquisite way, and I think it is fantastic that he takes us through the immensity of landscapes that I think make us play a little with the imagination, because they are things that we do not see in everyday life.

This book has a very great peculiarity, and it is that throughout the reading you realize that it is not only a journey through China, but it is a journey into oneself, in this case the character. The paradises he travels through, the ones he leaves behind and, let's say, his records, correspond to his childhood and life.

In some occasions the reading becomes tedious, the thread of the plot is lost a little, since he submerges very deep inside himself and does not advance towards his objective, which is the mountain. Another thing that I found very interesting is that at one point the book no longer has two narrators, but the reader discovers that this is only one, and that all the time has been playing with our minds by making us think it is one or the other person, although they are two different people and at the time they converge, there one begins to understand many things, but the thread of how to advance in the story is also lost, because the author stops a lot of time describing landscapes again and again, which seems a bit dense.

In general, it is a book that I recommend to read, which is why it helped the author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. It consists of 647 pages, it can easily be read in a week and a half if you read it constantly. I particularly consider that it is to read it several times, because it is as I said, a journey into ourselves, whether it is the lost paradises of our childhood, our anecdotes and our personal life.

This is my entry for the FEBRUARY BOOK REVIEW CONTEST: THE BOOK OF LOVE.