Book description
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 ng- n 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.
Very little is known about Wu Ch-eng-en (c. 1505-80) although he is
believed to have held the post of District Magistrate for a time. He
had a reputation as a good poet but only a few rather commonplace
verses of his survive in an anthology of Ming poetry and in a local gazetteer.
Arthur Waley CBE, FBS, was a distinguished authority on Chinese
language and literature. He was born in 1889 and graduated from the
Universities of Cambridge and Aberdeen. He died in 1966. His many
publications include 170 Chinese Poems, Japanese Poetry, The Tale
of Genji (6 vols), The Way and its Power, The Real
Tripitaka and Yuam Mei.
