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Best New Books

Monkey King: Journey to the West Wu Cheng'en and Julia Lovell (translator)
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Monkey King: Journey to the West

Wu Cheng'en and Julia Lovell (translator)

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, Tripitaka, 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.

This is a new, abridged translation by Julia Lovell, one of the West’s leading Sinologists. As well as ensuring the book is very funny in modern English, she also gives us 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.”

Editor’s note: the Penguin clothbound edition of this book is beautiful.

Recommendations from our site

“The protagonist, a monk named Tripitaka, is well meaning but weak, pious and learned, but inexperienced in the ways of the world, dissolving in tears at the slightest difficulty. He would never have been able to make it to India alone. Fortunately, he is protected by the bodhisattva of compassion, who provides him with a bodyguard, a mischievous monkey endowed with all manner of magical powers… 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.” Read more...

The best books on Buddhism

Donald S Lopez Jr, Theologians & Historians of Religion

Commentary

“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.”

Best China Books of 2020, recommended by Jeff Wasserstrom

Other books by Julia Lovell and Wu Cheng'en

Maoism: A Global History by Julia Lovell

Maoism: A Global History
by Julia Lovell

The Opium War by Julia Lovell

The Opium War
by Julia Lovell

The Great Wall by Julia Lovell

The Great Wall
by Julia Lovell

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