Which Journey to the West should you experience?

A monkey is born out of a rock, declares himself equal to heaven, loses badly, and spends the next fourteen years escorting a nervous monk across a continent full of things that want to eat him. That is the plot of a sixteenth-century Chinese novel. It is also the plot of a manga about a boy with a tail, a sixty-hour video game, and a circus opera by the man who made Gorillaz.

None of them is the definitive one. The complete translation is four volumes long and the best-loved English version is a fifth of that; the most beautiful film stops before the journey starts; the biggest game begins after it ends. Which one is right for you depends entirely on what you want tonight.

Take the quiz

Or browse every version

If quizzes aren’t your thing, browse instead: 18 versions across reading, watching, listening, and playing.

• The Anthony C. Yu Translation, revised (2012)

  All hundred chapters, and every footnote you didn’t know you wanted.

• Julia Lovell’s Monkey King (2021)

  The one to hand someone who has never read a word of it.

• Arthur Waley’s Monkey (Grove Press, 1958)

  The version people mean when they say they’ve read Monkey.

• Yu’s The Monkey and the Monk (2006)

  The real translation, at a fifth of the length.

• Journey to the West (CCTV, 1986)

  The version a billion people grew up on, wires and all.

• Havoc in Heaven (1961/1964)

  Ink painting that moves, and the most beautiful thing made from this book.

• Monkey (1978–1980)

  Camp, dubbed, and permanently lodged in a generation’s memory.

• Monkey King: Hero Is Back (2015)

  A broken Monkey, a small child, and ninety minutes that earn the ending.

• A Chinese Odyssey, Parts One and Two (1995)

  The one that argues the book is about loss.

• Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons (2013)

  Slapstick that turns, without warning, into body horror.

• LEGO Monkie Kid (2020– )

  The Monkey King, retired, mentoring a kid with a delivery scooter.

• Dragon Ball (1984–1995)

  Goku is Sun Wukong, right up until he isn’t.

• American Born Chinese (2006)

  The Monkey King as a parable about wanting to be someone else.

• Saiyuki (1997– )

  Four beautiful men in a jeep, with guns and cigarettes.

• Katsuya Terada’s The Monkey King (2005)

  Possibly the most extraordinary art anyone has made from this book.

• Black Myth: Wukong (2024)

  Sixty hours of being the Monkey King, and an argument about what happened after.

• Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010)

  The pilgrimage as post-apocalyptic science fiction, with Andy Serkis as Monkey.

• Monkey: Journey to the West (2008)

  A circus opera in Mandarin, by the pair who made Gorillaz.

Start with the big question

Which Journey to the West translation should you read? compares Yu, Lovell, Waley and Yu’s own abridgment — and the answer turns on length long before it turns on voice.
Every version is the full browsable list.