The Plum in the Golden Vase or, Chin P'ing Mei, Volume To The Rivals [Paperback]

In this second of a planned five-volume series, David Roy provides a complete and annotated translation of the famousChin P'ing Mei, an anonymous sixteenth-century Chinese novel that focuses on the domestic life of His-men Ch'ing, a corrupt, upwardly mobile merchant in a provincial town, who maintains a harem of six wives and concubines. This work, known primarily for its erotic realism, is also a landmark in the development of narrative art--not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical context.

With the possible exception ofThe Tale of Genji(1010) andDon Quixote(1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature. Although its importance in the history of Chinese narrative has long been recognized, the technical virtuosity of the author, which is more reminiscent of the Dickens ofBleak House, the Joyce ofUlysses, or the Nabokov ofLolitathan anything in the earlier Chinese fiction tradition, has not yet received adequate recognition. This is partly because all of the existing European translations are either abridged or based on an inferior recension of the text. This translation and its annotation aim 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.

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. [A] book of manners for the debauched. Its readers in the late Ming period likely hid it under their bedcovers. ---Amy Tan,New York Times Book Review Praise for Volume 1: [I]t is time to remind ourselves thatThe Plum in the Golden Vaseis not just about sex, whether the numerous descriptions of sexual acts throughout the novel lCV