Julia Lovell’s Monkey King (2021)

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

The novel is genuinely funny, and the fastest way to prove that is to cut it down until nothing slows the joke.

You want to actually finish it, and you would like it to be funny, because you have been told it is funny and so far nobody has proved it.

What it keeps and what it changes

Keeps: the comedy, the pace, and the shape of the pilgrimage — Penguin’s own listing calls this an abridgment and does not pretend otherwise.
Changes: the length. This is 384 pages where the complete translation is four volumes, and the prose is modern enough to read on a train.

Keeps the comedy and the shape of the pilgrimage. Changes the length — 384 pages against the complete translation's 1,896 — and the register, into modern English that moves. Penguin's own listing calls it an abridgment, which is the correct way to sell it.

Whose story is it?

Monkey’s, unmistakably. Gene Luen Yang’s foreword makes the case for why that is the version the West keeps meeting first.

How much time does it ask?

384 pages; the audiobook, read by Robert Wu, runs 13 hrs 58 min.

Penguin Classics, translated with an introduction and notes by Julia Lovell, foreword by Gene Luen Yang.

Where to find it

Buy the paperback — Bookshop.org →

Other ways to get it: Paperback — Amazon ↗ · Kindle — Amazon ↗

Borrow it free: Borrow on Libby ↗ · Find at your library — WorldCat ↗

Common questions

Is Julia Lovell's Monkey King abridged?

Yes — Penguin's own listing says so. It runs 384 pages against the complete translation's 1,896, and the cutting is what makes it fast. It is the usual recommendation for a first reader, with a foreword by Gene Luen Yang.

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More ways west: The Anthony C. Yu Translation, revised (2012) · Arthur Waley’s Monkey (Grove Press, 1958) · Yu’s The Monkey and the Monk (2006)