Gao was born in 1940 in Jiangxi Province, and graduated from the French department at the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute. In 1987 he left China for political reasons, and settled in France.
高行健，一九四○年出生於江西，北京外國語學院法語系畢業，一九八七年因為政治因素流亡海外，定居法國。