Katsuya Terada’s The Monkey King (2005)

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

The novel is a bestiary before it is a plot, and Terada draws it as one — every page dense enough to stop you.

You want the object, not the plot, and you will happily spend an hour on thirty pages.

What it keeps and what it changes

Keeps: the premise, the Silk Road, and the sense that the world west of China is genuinely full of things that will eat you.
Changes: the priority. Story is subordinate to image here; a reader who wants the tale told will bounce off it, and should.

Whose story is it?

the artist’s, honestly. This is a painter’s reading, and it is not shy about that.

How much time does it ask?

136 pages, full colour.

Dark Horse, 136 pages, full colour — and an 18+ advisory on the publisher’s own page.

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 ↗

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More ways west: The Anthony C. Yu Translation, revised (2012) · Julia Lovell’s Monkey King (2021) · Arthur Waley’s Monkey (Grove Press, 1958)