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Monkey King cover art

Monkey King

Written by: Wu Cheng'en, Julia Lovell - translator - editor - introduction, Gene Luen Yang - foreword
Narrated by: Robert Wu
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Publisher's Summary

A Chinese Lord of the Rings and one of the all-time great fantasy novels - which Neil Gaiman has said "is in the DNA of 1.5 billion people" - now in a thrilling new translation

A shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life, Monkey King is one of the most memorable superheroes in world literature. 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 500 years later for a chance to redeem himself: He is to protect the pious monk Tripitaka on his 14-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 81 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.

©2021 Julia Lovell, translation (P)2021 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

A Fortune Best Book of the Year 

“A breezy, action-packed narrative.... Rich with imaginative world-building that evokes the best Pixar films.... The book is also quite funny.... With this new readable version of Monkey King, Western readers will also have plenty of fun.” (San Francisco Chronicle

“A fun, accessible book that will attract readers to a text that may otherwise seem obscure and imposing.... The jokes hit every register, from slapstick and toilet humor to dryly delivered drolleries.... The literary analog for the gonzo humor is Rabelais and the fight scenes are the stuff of superhero comics. But the comparison that kept coming to mind is with the irreverent, twinkling humor of Looney Tunes cartoons, with Monkey King a cross between Bugs Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil.... A rollicking work of high buffoonery.” (The Wall Street Journal

“Exhibit[s] a rollicking exuberance.... [It] has long been - and will continue to be - a rewarding and enjoyable reading experience for many people.” (The Washington Post

What listeners say about Monkey King

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Skip to chapter 1

Unless you want the ending ruined, such a let down. In the first few introduction chapters the author makes comparisons to other media that was inspired by the monkey king and in doing so spoiled how the monkey king ends. so if you don't want it spoiled skip to chapter 1.

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