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A review by wintermute314
Monkey: A Journey to the West by Wu Ch'eng-En
4.0
This book is about the quest of a monk to go to India to bring some buddhist scriptures to China. The book is a translation of some of the chapters of "Journey to the west" by Cheng-en Wu which is much longer. The translator opted not to shorten the chapters but to omit chapters. Since the book consists of many stories or separate adventures, I wouldn't have noticed is had the translator not mentioned this in the foreword.
The monkey king is to help monk on his quest and actually he is the main subject of the book. It is very humorously written and the English translation is very literary (although I cannot vouch for the correctness of the translation since I do not read Chinese).
There is a lot of (eastern) magic in the book and the descriptions of the unruly Monkey and life in the heavens where Lao Tse, Dragon Kings, Bodhisattva's and other "gods" live are very humorous.
The book is a classic in Chinese literature and I read it while on a trip in China. Everybody in China seemed to know this book, and on temples, bridges or drum towers often sceneries from the book where depicted.
This book was fun to read and I can definitely advice it to anyone wanting to know more about Chinese culture.
The monkey king is to help monk on his quest and actually he is the main subject of the book. It is very humorously written and the English translation is very literary (although I cannot vouch for the correctness of the translation since I do not read Chinese).
There is a lot of (eastern) magic in the book and the descriptions of the unruly Monkey and life in the heavens where Lao Tse, Dragon Kings, Bodhisattva's and other "gods" live are very humorous.
The book is a classic in Chinese literature and I read it while on a trip in China. Everybody in China seemed to know this book, and on temples, bridges or drum towers often sceneries from the book where depicted.
This book was fun to read and I can definitely advice it to anyone wanting to know more about Chinese culture.