Which Journey to the West translation should you read?
Almost every argument about English translations of this novel is really an argument about one number. Anthony C. Yu’s complete translation runs to four volumes and 1,896 pages. Arthur Waley’s Monkey is 320. They are not two renderings of the same text; one of them is most of a different book.
So the first question is not which voice you like. It is how much of it you want.
| Translation | Complete? | Length | Apparatus | Reads like |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anthony C. Yu, revised (2012) | All hundred chapters | 4 vols, 1,896 pp | Full scholarly notes + introduction | A great novel with a scholar at your elbow |
| Yu, The Monkey and the Monk (2006) | Abridged, by the same translator | 528 pp | Yu’s framing, kept | The serious translation, at a fifth of the length |
| Julia Lovell, Monkey King (2021) | Abridged, per the publisher | 384 pp | Introduction and notes; foreword by Gene Luen Yang | Fast, modern, and funny on purpose |
| Arthur Waley, Monkey (1958) | A selection | 320 pp | Introduction by Hu Shih | The English prose everyone fell in love with |
The two abridgments are not a compromise between the other two — they are different arguments about what the novel is. Waley cut it toward comedy and one unforgettable character. Lovell cut it toward pace and a first-time reader. Yu cut his own translation toward the chapters that carry the religious argument. All three are honest about being cut; only the four-volume set is the whole thing.
Honest verdicts
The Anthony C. Yu Translation, revised (2012)
You want the actual novel, all hundred chapters of it, and you would rather be told what the Daoist alchemy in chapter nineteen is doing than skate past it. everything — all hundred chapters, the poems that punctuate them, and an apparatus that explains what the Buddhism and the Daoism are actually doing.
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 ↗
Yu’s The Monkey and the Monk (2006)
You want Yu's translation and Yu's scholarship, and you have looked at the four-volume set and been honest with yourself. Yu’s translation and his framing of what the novel is arguing about, in the chapters he judged load-bearing.
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 ↗
Julia Lovell’s Monkey King (2021)
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. the comedy, the pace, and the shape of the pilgrimage — Penguin’s own listing calls this an abridgment and does not pretend otherwise.
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 ↗
Arthur Waley’s Monkey (Grove Press, 1958)
You want the book that made English readers care about this novel in the first place, and you are relaxed about the fact that most of it isn't here. the voice. Waley’s Monkey is quick, dry and endlessly quotable, and Grove’s edition carries Hu Shih’s introduction.
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
Which Journey to the West translation should I read first?
Julia Lovell's Monkey King, unless you already know you want the whole thing. It is 384 pages, it is abridged and says so, and it is fast enough to finish. If you want the complete novel, the answer is Anthony C. Yu's revised four-volume translation and there is no real second option.
Is there a complete English translation of Journey to the West?
Yes — Anthony C. Yu's, revised in 2012, in four volumes from the University of Chicago Press: 576, 432, 440 and 448 pages. W. J. F. Jenner's translation for Foreign Languages Press is the other complete one and the standard inside China, though a current in-print edition of it is hard to pin down.
Is Arthur Waley's Monkey the whole novel?
No. Grove's edition runs 320 pages against the complete translation's 1,896, so most of the novel is not in it. What is there is the version that carried the book into English, and it is still the most purely enjoyable prose of the four.
How long does it take to read Journey to the West?
The complete Yu translation is a season — 1,896 pages across four volumes. Yu's own abridgment is 528 pages, Lovell is 384, and Waley is 320, which is a week of evenings. Lovell's audiobook, read by Robert Wu, runs 13 hours 58 minutes.
What's the difference between Journey to the West and Monkey?
Monkey is Arthur Waley's 1942 English selection from the novel, and the title stuck: for a lot of English readers the book simply is Monkey. Journey to the West is the whole sixteenth-century novel, of which Monkey is a fraction, and Sun Wukong is only one of the four who walk it.
Still torn? Let the quiz decide →
Or see every version — all 18 of them.