This definitive three volume set of 'Journey To The West' by Wu Cheng'en is a must read for anyone interested in fantasy and Chinese mythology. 'Journey To The West' has everything from monkey mayhem to monsters, and magic. The quest for the sacred Buddhist sutras in India makes for an exciting journey filled with danger, demons and damsels. If you love classic Chinese literature or Buddhism, then you have to read 'Journey To The West'. I understand that in 2001, a TV movie entitled, 'The Monkey King' is scheduled for released. The following is a summary of the movie: "American journalist Nick Orton is caught up in the world of Chinese gods and monsters while on a search for the long lost manuscript to 'Hsi Yu Chi' (The Journey to the West) by Wu Ch'eng En. He is accompanied on his journey by a humanoid ape with incredible strength and magical powers, a humanoid pig-man, and his brother-in-arms, an ex-cannibal. Based on one of the greatest stories in Chinese history." (Lawrence De Meza from imdb.com) So what are you waiting for, buy it now and read it before 'Monkey King' mania sweeps the States!

This book is one of the Four Great Novels in China. Everybody in China know this story. Sun WuKong--the monkey, Zhu Bajie--the pig, everybody like them. Though it was written in 1570s, it is still a great book for children.

This is a great story not just this volume, I really recommend these books to be read by anyone it has everything that a great -great story need.
Prepare yourself for a great journey...read the story.

This has got to be one of the best stories ever made. and this volume is my personal favorite. It keeps you thinking from start to end. If you are someone who enjoys mythology then this is a great book. It's also a must have for the die hard Dragon Ball fans.

I have long adored Chinese Classics, this being my favorite one. I have Chinese ancestry, but cannot speak or write or read Chinese. I am glad this book has now been put into English for many readers to read. Journey to the West tells of a Tang Priest who is sent on the Tang Emperor's orders to get the scriptures from the Tathagata Buddha in the West. Along his journey, he frees Monkey from the five elements mountain, gets Zhu Bajie (Martian Tian Peng), but now a pig, and Sha Wujing. They overcome 81 obstacles to finally reach the Buddha and become buddhas themselves. The characters in this book are so vivid (especially Sun Wu Kong). The way the author writes, its like being with the Monkey King and watching his journey. When I first watched the Journey to the West the TV show in HongKong, I was hooked. The fascinating martial arts, the humorous bits in the show, and the plot that makes you hang on the edge of your seat. When I read the book, I was so intrigued in the writing, I couldn't put it down. THis is definitely a book worth reading. The language is moderately difficult. I had quite an easy time reading it (and I'm only 8). A must read, it is absolutely fantastic. (by the way, the Monkey King is played by Dicky Cheung in the movie, who is a WONDERFUL actor. Journey to the West (not animated, its real picture) is a great show! )

One of the most important features of this translation is its accuracy. It is difficult to find a translation that is as true to the original language as this is. Much of the Chinese, especially the poems, is not only archaic but extremely obscure and difficult to approximate in the English language. The author has accomplished this with this work. The footnoting should also be mentioned, The information contained in the extensive footnotes and appendix's has been an integral part not only in my understanding of this book but much of my other studies of Asian mythologies and related materials.

This is a very great story, not just this volume, I really recommend these books to be read by anyone it has everything that a great -great story need.
Prepare yourself for a great journey...read the story.

_Journey to the West_ is, almost more than anything else, a hilarious read. The adventures of Handsome Monkey King, which dominate this volume, are witty and engrossing. Much better than many historical epics, in which everybody is just so darn EARNEST, this book inserts wit and a genuine (and gentle) understanding of human nature into an engrossing, and often deadly serious and menacing storyline. Yu's translation is clear and lucid, and supports the action very nicely. So many Asian epics are muddled (well, massacred, really) in translation that Yu's gifts are a breath of fresh air.

I highly and enthusiastically recommend _Journey to the West_ to...well...everybody.

This is a book written on lots of levels. It's a great adventure story for kids or for anyone else at first reading (although the old Arthur Waley abridgement is better for that kind of reading). On second (and third, and fourth...) readings it becomes clear that this is a story of the different parts of the self--the "five elements" in classical Chinese terms--that learn to integrate and find the self-discipline to reach the Buddha-realm. Each adventure is a challenge to master a different part of the self and its experience of life: the "six robbers" are the illusion that the six senses show us the truth, the White Bone Demon is fear of the idea of death, etc.. Monkey, the main character, is the limitless power of the mind, arrogant but tameable. Not just a great story, this is book of incredible depth and understanding. Yu's is the only translation that understands this.

Yu has done an excellent job in this translation. The book is heavily footnoted with Buddhist and Dao references. It's an older translation so it uses Wade-Giles instead of modern pinyin. It's also the least abridged. If you can't read the original Chinese this comes a close second.

This is a great story not just this volume, I really recommend these books to be read by anyone it has everything that a great -great story need.
Prepare yourself for a great journey...read the story.

This is the most complete and faithful translation of Journey to the West I have yet found. It is the third version of the story I've read, and unlike those other versions ("Adventures of Monkey King"/ISBN 0962076511 and "Monkey : A Journey to the West [ABRIDGED]"/ISBN 1570625816), it contains the complete and unabridged story, preserving very faitflly both the style and content of the original story.

This extreme faithfulness is both a strength and a weakness. It's a strength in that you get a real feeling for the scope of the original work, and you get to hear all the interesting little back-stories and side-stories that make Journey to the West one of the great works of Chinese literaure. It's a weakness because these stories often seem completely irrelevant, and may be quite confusing to someone who is not familiar with Chinese culture and religion.

For example, every time something happens in Heaven, Hell or in the palace of the Tang Emperor, the book includes a complete list of everyone who attended. In Heaven, at least, many of the names are descriptive (names of stars, constellations, etc.) and are therefore translated. In the Tang Emperor's palace, though, you'll get a list of 10 or 20 names in Chinese, and only some of the names ever get stories attached to them in the book (and I challenge any non-Chinese speaker to remember the names when they do show up again).

There's also a lot of poetry, and though the translations are good, translated poetry can never equal the original. In one sequence, a fisherman and a woodsman argue in verse for 10 or more pages of very small type, frequently singing songs set to tunes few non-Chinese would recognize by name. These characters are important only in that the end of their conversation sets up a conflict, so the only purpose of the sequence is to provide a chance to read the poetry. It's good poetry, to be sure, but it really can drag a bit.

You can't just automatically skip over all the poems, as you might do with Tolkien, either. Elements of the story are often told in verse. You can usually skim if you're not interested in a particular bit of verse, but don't skip it entirely.

The structure of the work is also surprisingly complex at times, especially given its age. It will at times veer far from the main thrust of the story to recount the entire life history of a character, and has many side stories that somehow tie back into the main plot several chapters later. You may at times find yourself wondering just why the author chose to include a particular bit of story, but there's almost always a payoff waiting somewhere down the line.

Another problem is that the style of the storytelling is not very concise. If someone in the story needs to recount what has happened to them, you'll get a second, (fortunately much abridged) version of an earlier portion of the story, written as dialog, this time. You could make similar sorts of complaints about many of the early great works of English fiction, or probably just about any other country's older fiction, so this is not really a strong criticism given the work's great age, but I often found myself wishing the author (or the translator) had just written, "he told them what had happened" and left it at that.

There were also many quirks of the translation that bothered me. The word "memorial" was used throughout instead of "memorandum". It took me quite a while to figure out that was what was going on. I read all of the abridged translation that also made the same mistake throughout, but still didn't figure it out until I was several chapters into this one.

Will all these complaints, you're probably wondering why I gave the book 4 stars. The fact is, for all its faults and quirks, "Journey to the West" is still one of the greatest works of fiction ever written. The Monkey King is without a doubt my favorite character in any work I have ever read or watched. The story of his journey is a brilliant parable on the jouney to enlightenment, while at the same time a story of great humor and exciting action. It also provides fascinating insight into the history and traditional culture of China.

If you want to get the whole story and can't read Chinese, this edition is your absolute best bet. (Indeed, it's pretty much your only bet.) Some of the other translations may be a faster read, but none are as satisfying.

Journey to the West is probably the most well-known tale amongst Chinese folk the world over. It is a story that has been adapted in the form of operas, television series, cartoons and movies many times over. To be able to read a complete and unabridged version of this epic is a joy indeed. My only regret is that as a Western-educated Chinese, I am not able to read this masterpiece in it's original language. Although the translator does a very good job at translating the book, I am sure many nuances and subtleties of the Chinese language have been lost in the translation.

The story is a simple one. Set during the early Tang dynasty (the peak of Chinese civilisation), a holy Buddhist monk has to travel from China to India to collect the true Mahayana Buddhist scriptures from the Lord Buddha himself, in order to bring enlightenment to his fellow country men. The journey is a long and ardous one, not least because numerous demons lie waiting in ambush for a chance to capture and eat the monk, as his holy body will confer immortality on whoever eats it. Thus, the Goddess of Compassion assembles a strange group of bodyguards for the monk: the proud and mischievous Monkey, the lustful and greedy Pig, the loyal and steadfast Friar Sand, and a Dragon Prince transformed into a horse. Their various adventures are so full of humor and wacky hijinks that I cannot help myself from laughing out from time to time. Monkey is the ultimate Chinese version of the universal trickster-hero. Do yourself a favor and pick up this book. You will not regret it for a moment.

This is a wonderful translation of the Journey to the West. It is an unabridged translation, therefore it is 3 books long. But it is worth it. Not only is it written clearly, but it keeps the style of the original, meaning that interwoven between pharagraphs of prose are poems. This give the book a wonderful charm that the abridged, prose versions lack. The ancient Chinese thought, such as yin and yang, Daoism, Chinese Buddhism, also give the book an authentic flavor that enriches the experience of reading this classic. It is still the same wonderful story of the michevous Monkey King, his difficulties with the gods in heaven, and his redeeming pilgramage with the Buddhist monk/priest Sanzang to find sutras. For anyone seriously interested in this story and who doesn't read Chinese, this is the edition for them!

This anthology is the first of its kind in breadth and subject matter, and is a welcome addition to classrooms and bookshelves. However, I am only giving it three stars because the editors chose to parcel out each of these women writers to individuals, ranging from top-notch translators, to graduate students. The result is a mish-mosh of translations, sometimes brilliant, sometimes lackluster, sometimes not even heeding the original form of the poem. Worse still, it has been summarily edited--presumably for the sake of consistency--in such a fashion that there is a certain staleness to the sections. Nonetheless, it is as yet the only book of its kind in English, and therefore a necessary and important addition to the scholarship.

This anthology has been long in coming and long needed. An impressive accomplishment from a number of perspectives, its 891 pages are organized into two sections, Part One: Poetry, pages 1-666, and Part Two, Criticism, 667-804, and followed by extensive notes and an impressive bibliography of the Chinese and English Languages sources for the selection. Each section is then organized chronologically by Chinese dynasty so that the reader can flip from the Poetry to the Criticism within a particular dynasty. Within each section, there are both short biographies of the authors and selections from the poetry of more than 150 women, with critical notes. Thus the anthology offers a wealth of literary and historical information and a breadth of coverage for translations of the many Women poets of China that has not been seen in the past.

The anthology ends with the early 20th century, and represents largely poetry written in classical or literary Chinese. While some of these poets have appeared in general anthologies of Chinese poetry, and will be well known to scholars in the field, there has never been such a comprehensive work in English before this one. I was delighted to discover among my old favorites like the empress Wu Zetian and the Sung poetess Li Qingzhao, large numbers of female poets, especially from the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) through the beginning of the republican period in China (1911). It was also delightful to find that the criticism of some of these poets, and male counterparts who commented on women's poetry, were translated, many for the first time. As near as I can tell, they have been exhaustive in their attempts to select from a broad range of titles by individual poets and the overall result is that one can no longer credibly present women as minor contributors to the literature of this vast and ancient country.

The text described above is not the earliest attempt, but it is the most complete for a scholarly audience. The earlier anthology addressing female poets of China, edited by Kenneth Rexroth, and it was a thrilling introduction when it first came out in the seventies, but Women Poets of China (first published by Seabury Press as The Orchid Boat, 1972). New York: USA New Directions, 1982, which is still in print, offers both many fewer poets and much less context for their work. While Rexroth and Chung should be applauded for their service to the scholarly community, they serve as only a taste of the wealth to be found in this new 1999 title.

As I am sure is by now clear, this anthology includes all the scholarly framework that make it an excellent addition to any academic library purporting to deal with world literature, and a potential candidate for a course book. In fact, one could present undergraduates with a decent history of Chinese poetry by using it to introduce the periods and types rather than a more traditional anthology.

However, Women Writers of Traditional China is so well organized and readable that it is also appropriate for most public libraries as a solid, readable, general introduction to women in Chinese poetry. The translations are poetically rendered, the periodization gives them context and the bibliography locates the texts in a corpus of Chinese poetry. This book is well worth its price and highly recommended. Cloth, 891 pg., Notes, Bibliography, Index of Names.

Jan Bogstad, Reviewer