Monkey King
Journey to the West
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- $199.00
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- $199.00
Descripción editorial
*Now a Netflix animated movie featuring Stephanie Hsu, Bowen Yang, and BD Wong among the all-Asian voice cast*
Before there was The Lord of the Rings, there was China's Monkey King, one of the all-time great fantasy novels--which Neil Gaiman has said "is in the DNA of 1.5 billion people"--now published in a thrilling new one-volume translation with an illustrated foreword by the author of the New York Times bestselling graphic novel that is the basis for the Disney+ series American Born Chinese, starring Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and Stephanie Hsu, as well as Daniel Wu as the Monkey King
A shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life, Sun Wukong, or Monkey King, is one of the most memorable superheroes in world literature, known to legions of fans of the most popular anime of all time, Dragon Ball, and the world's largest e-sport, the video game League of Legends. High-spirited and omni-talented, he amasses dazzling weapons and skills on his journey to immortality: a gold-hooped staff that can grow as tall as the sky and shrink to the size of a needle; the ability to travel 108,000 miles in a single somersault. A master of subterfuge, he can transform himself into whomever or whatever he chooses and turn each of his body's 84,000 hairs into an army of clones. But his penchant for mischief repeatedly gets him into trouble, and when he raids Heaven's Orchard of Immortal Peaches and gorges himself on the elixirs of the gods, the Buddha pins him beneath a mountain, freeing him only five hundred years later for a chance to redeem himself: He is to protect the pious monk Tripitaka on his fourteen-year journey to India in search of precious Buddhist sutras that will bring enlightenment to the Chinese empire.
Joined by two other fallen immortals--Pigsy, a rice-loving pig able to fly with its ears, and Sandy, a depressive man-eating river-sand monster--Monkey King undergoes eighty-one trials, doing battle with Red Boy, Princess Jade-Face, the Monstress Dowager, and all manner of dragons, ogres, wizards, and femmes fatales, navigating the perils of Fire-Cloud Cave, the River of Flowing Sand, the Water-Crystal Palace, and Casserole Mountain, and being serially captured, lacquered, sautéed, steamed, and liquefied, but always hatching an ingenious plan to get himself and his fellow pilgrims out of their latest jam.
Monkey King: Journey to the West is at once a rollicking adventure, a comic satire of Chinese bureaucracy, and a spring of spiritual insight. With this new translation, the irrepressible rogue hero of one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature has the potential to vault, with his signature cloud-somersault and unerring sense for fun, into the hearts of millions of Americans.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lovell's new translation and abridgement of Wu's 16th-century Chinese folktale spins a satire of bureaucracy and spirituality as an unlikely ensemble of pilgrims travels to India to acquire Buddhist scriptures. Fearful spiritual leader Tripitaka is the first to embark. In his travels, he frees the Monkey King from a 500-year imprisonment but in exchange Monkey must serve Tripitaka in his mission, weathering a 14-year-long journey to atone for his sins and attain immortality. Along the way, the gluttonous pig demon, Pigsy, and Sandy, a river monster, join the pilgrimage, hoping to redeem themselves and lending their skills to the group. Their quest is jam-packed with outrageous danger and outlandish transformations as the pilgrims are beaten, captured, impregnated, and even cooked but Monkey always finds an ingenious way to rescue the group from their latest catastrophe. Lovell does an admirable job condensing the original text, which spans 100 chapters, while capturing the essence of Chinese fantastical storytelling and parody. Readers who enjoy nutty adventures and nonsensical plots will get a kick out of this madcap fable.
