Monkey

From the 13th century onwards these legends have been constantly represented on the Chinese stage. Wu Ch’êng-ên had therefore a great deal to build on when he wrote his long fairy tale. The original book is indeed of immense length, and is usually read in abridged forms. The method adopted in these abridgements is to leave the original number of separate episodes, but drastically reduce them in length, particularly by cutting out dialogue. I have for the most part adopted the opposite principle, omitting many episodes, but translating those that are retained almost in full, leaving out, however, most of the incidental passages in verse, which go very badly into English. Monkey is unique in its combination of beauty with absurdity, of profundity with nonsense. Folk-lore, allegory, religion, history, anti-bureaucratic satires and pure poetry - such are the singularly diverse elements out of which the book is compounded ...

MP3 Audio Book: This disc can be played on your computer and can be transferred to your MP3 player or iPOD. It will NOT play on a standard CD player, although many DVD players and newer CD players have the ability to play MP3 discs.