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Product Description
A first Penguin edition, 1961, of the translation by Arthur Waley of the 16th century Chinese Classic Monkey - by Wu Ch'eng- En
Light edgewear and spotting to the page block and the pale yellow covers. Period owners name to the inner title page.
Also known as Journey to the West, Wu Ch'eng-en's Monkey is one of the 'Four Great Classical Novels' in Chinese literature, translated by Arthur Waley in Penguin Classics.
Monkey depicts the adventures of Prince Tripitaka, a young Buddhist priest on a dangerous pilgrimage to India to retrieve sacred scriptures accompanied by his three unruly disciples: the greedy pig creature Pipsy, the river monster Sandy - and Monkey. Hatched from a stone egg and given the secrets of heaven and earth, the irrepressible trickster Monkey can ride on the clouds, become invisible and transform into other shapes - skills that prove very useful when the four travellers come up against the dragons, bandits, demons and evil wizards that threaten to prevent them in their quest. Wu Ch'eng-en wrote Monkey in the mid-sixteenth century, adding his own distinctive style to an ancient Chinese legend, and in so doing created a dazzling combination of nonsense with profundity, slapstick comedy with spiritual wisdom.
