The Journey to the West, Volume 4

By James Field

Read the legendary Chinese classic that inspired the hit game Black Myth: Wukong

Anthony C. Yu's translation of The Journey to the West, initially published in 1983, introduced English-speaking audiences to the classic Chinese novel in its entirety for the first time. Written in the sixteenth century, The Journey to the West tells the story of the fourteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang, one of China's most famous religious heroes, and his three supernatural disciples, in search of Buddhist scriptures. Throughout his journey, Xuanzang fights demons who wish to eat him, communes with spirits, and traverses a land riddled with a multitude of obstacles, both real and fantastical. An adventure rich with danger and excitement, this seminal work of the Chinese literary canonis by turns allegory, satire, and fantasy.

With over a hundred chapters written in both prose and poetry, The Journey to the West has always been a complicated and difficult text to render in English while preserving the lyricism of its language and the content of its plot. But Yu has successfully taken on the task, and in this new edition he has made his translations even more accurate and accessible. The explanatory notes are updated and augmented, and Yu has added new material to his introduction, based on his original research as well as on the newest literary criticism and scholarship on Chinese religious traditions. He has also modernized the transliterations included in each volume, using the now-standard Hanyu Pinyin romanization system. Perhaps most important, Yu has made changes to the translation itself in order to make it as precise as possible.

One of the great works of Chinese literature, The Journey to the West is not only invaluable to scholars of Eastern religion and literature, but, in Yu's elegant rendering, also a delight for any reader.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226971392
• ISBN13: 9780226971391
• Release Date: December 2012
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Part IV, For Intelligent Readers Only!

This is the final volume of one of the four great written masterpieces of China, beautifully translated by Professor Yu. You can feel the long and arduous journey to India coming to an end at last, along with the end of the even longer and harder journey from immaturity to maturity. The point of the Monkey King's very first teacher, "Nothing in the world is difficult, only the mind makes it so" comes back to the fore in this...

The Best Set of Books I've Read in a Long Time

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,...

A student

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...