Snow in August is a new play by Gao Xingjian, the winner of 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature. The story is based on the life of the legendary Huineng (AD 633-713), the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China. It represents a change in the direction on the part of the playwright - a return to a Chinese theme after years of writing on "universal" subject matters.
In this play, Gao finds a soul-mate in Huineng, a marginal figure in the society of his time, who defies established thinking and conventions and challenges even the emperor in refusing to serve the imperial court.