The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume Five: The Dissolution [Paperback]

This is the fifth and final volume in David Roy's celebrated translation of one of the most famous and important novels in Chinese literature.The Plum in the Golden Vaseor,Chin Ping Meiis an anonymous sixteenth-century work that focuses on the domestic life of Hsi-men Ching, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. The novel, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of the narrative art formnot only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context.

This complete and annotated translation aims to faithfully represent and elucidate all the rhetorical features of the original in its most authentic form and thereby enable the Western reader to appreciate this Chinese masterpiece at its true worth.

"One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2014""One of The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf Best Books of 2013, chosen by Tash Aw"David Tod Roy(19332016) was professor emeritus of Chinese literature at the University of Chicago. His monumental five-volume translation of theChin P'ing Meiwas completed in 2013. The story sprawls. There are more than eight hundred named characters, from high officials and military commanders to peddlers and prostitutes, with actors, tailors, monks and nuns, fortunetellers, acrobats, and many others, even cats and dogs, in between. Roy helps us keep track of everyone in a fifty-six-page 'cast of characters.'. . . In the original woodblock printing of the text, characters follow one another, without punctuation, no matter their source. Modern printings provide punctuation, but Roy goes further by devising a system of indentation and differing type sizes to set off allusions, poems, and songs. With this editorial help, the translation is actually easier to read than the original. ---Perry Link,New York Review of Books Davidlƒ$