Abstract: The novel Le dit de Tianyi, written by the Chinese-French writer Francois Cheng, reveals the protagonist’s helplessness, confusion, perplexity, lonliness as well as a sense of frustration and depression when confronted such life circumstances as destiny, death and desired love. The novel displays Man’s defiance of absurdity and yearning for freedom, including the pursuit of perfect humanity and the true state of being a “Man”. As Theodor Adorno put it, human lives in a state of despair, yet despair is hope. Now that absurdity is unavoidably in existence, hope will be born out of despair, as the novel metaphorically illuminates.

Key words: foreign literature, Francois Cheng, Le dit de Tianyi, absurdity, hope out of despair