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Monkey King
Journey to the West
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Brief Description
One of the greatest classics of Chinese literature One of China's Four Great Classical Novels, Monkey King was written anonymously during the Ming dynasty and is most commonly attributed to Wu Cheng'en, the son of a silk-shop clerk from east China. It recounts a Tang-dynasty monk's...
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Format: Paperback / softback
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Monkey King
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Description
One of the greatest classics of Chinese literature
One of China's Four Great Classical Novels, Monkey King was written anonymously during the Ming dynasty and is most commonly attributed to Wu Cheng'en, the son of a silk-shop clerk from east China. It recounts a Tang-dynasty monk's quest for Buddhist scriptures, accompanied by an omni-talented kung-fu Monkey King called Sun Wukong; a rice-loving divine pig; and a depressive man-eating river-sand monster.
Comparable to The Canterbury Tales or Don Quixote, the tale is at once a comic adventure story, a humorous satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a spring of spiritual insight and an extended allegory in which the group of pilgrims journeys towards enlightenment.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780143138938
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 29 July 2025
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Contributors:
- Translated by Julia Lovell
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 35.0mm
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 500g
Pages: 384
About the Author
Wu Cheng'en (Author) Very little is known about Wu Cheng'en (c. 1505-80), although he is believed to have held the post of District Magistrate for a time. He had a reputation as a good poet, but only a few rather commonplace verses of his survive in an anthology of Ming poetry and in a local gazetteer. Julia Lovell (Translator) Julia Lovell is the translator of The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China- The Complete Fiction of Lu Xun, and is the author of Maoism, for which she won the 2019 Cundhill History Prize, and The Opium War, for which she won the Jan Michalski Prize. She is Professor of Modern China at Birkbeck College, University of London, and writes about China for The Guardian, Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. She lives in Cambridge.
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