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Monkey King

Monkey King

Journey to the West

Summary

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.

Reviews

  • Julia Lovell's new translation of Monkey King: Journey to the West is the best English edition of the classic Chinese fantasy novel I have ever read. If you wish to understand why Monkey King has been a fixture in Chinese popular culture for no fewer than five centuries, then look no further
    Los Angeles Review of Books

About the author

Wu Ch'eng-en

Very little is known about Wu Ch-eng-en (c. 1505-80). He was a Chinese novelist and poet of the Ming Dynasty, and is considered by many to be the author of Journey to the West (Monkey King), one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature.
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