Monkey King: Journey to the West
Wu Cheng'en, translated by Julia Lovell
Pictured is an excellent abridged edition of The Monkey King, translated and with an introduction by Julia Lovell.
Monkey King or Journey to the West is one of the classics of Chinese literature, written at the end of the 16th century. The story is based on a real historical figure, Xuanzang, who in the late 620s travelled to India, bringing back Buddhist manuscripts to China. The 16th century, fantastical version of the story, attributed to Wu Cheng’en, may not correspond with historical reality, but offers a wonderful snapshot of imperial China and its very distinctive worldview.
The 2021 abridged translation of Monkey King by Julia Lovell was recommended by historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom as one of the best China books of the year. As well as ensuring the book is very funny in modern English, Lovell gives a very neat introduction to the book and what it tells us about Ming-era China. “Belying the old cliché of imperial China as self-sufficient, isolationist and xenophobic, Journey to the West—an odyssey out of China, to attain the wisdom of Indian Buddhist civilization—tells a different story: one of Chinese fascination with foreign exotica.”
Recommendations from our site
“Journey to the West … is one of the most loved, adapted and referenced classics of East Asian literature. The basis for the story is the 16-year journey of Xuanzang (602-664), a Buddhist monk … but over the centuries the story evolved from a historical travel account into a fantasy quest.” Read more...
Five East Asian Classic Books Worth Reading
Tuva Kahrs, Five Books Editor
“It’s one of those books that if you grow up in China, you know the story, even if you haven’t read the book…It’s a quintessentially Chinese work, it’s fundamental to Chinese culture and, yet, it has elements in it that do not fit in at all with the stereotyped vision of China as this place of Confucian hierarchies where familial ties and stability are all that matters. It’s the story of an adventure, a trip on the road by these characters with magical capabilities. The Monkey King, the novel’s provocative and provoking protagonist, likes to turn the world upside down and revels in chaos.” Read more...
Jeffrey Wasserstrom, Historian
“In 629, a Chinese monk named Xuanzang set out for India in order to retrieve Buddhist scriptures, returning in 645. He was welcomed as a hero by the emperor and received the title ‘Master of the Tripitaka’, the Buddhist canon. Xuanzang wrote a detailed account of his travels, entitled ‘Great Tang Records on the Western Regions.’ His long journey to India and back, much of it alone, is considered one of the most remarkable feats in the history of Chinese Buddhism, taking on legendary proportions. In the 16th century, Wu Cheng’en wrote a comic novel about it, entitled Journey to the West…Journey to the West is one of the great picaresque novels in world literature, often uproariously funny and filled with all manner of magical derring-do – even better than Harry Potter.” Read more...
Donald S Lopez Jr, Theologians & Historians of Religion
“Also in 2021 a new translation of Journey to the West/Monkey King is coming out. Julia Lovell has done an abridged translation and I’ve been reading that…This comes with a very good introduction, placing it in context.”
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