Description
Book Synopsis**Named One of the Best Chinese Romance Novels by Lifestyle Asia**The greatest novel of physical love which China has produced. Pearl S. BuckA saga of ruthless ambition, murder, and lust, The Golden Lotus (Jin Ping Mei) has been called the fifth Great Classical Novel in Chinese literature, joining the Four Great Classics: Journey to the West, The Water Margin, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone), and is recognized as one of the Four Masterworks of the Ming novel. Golden Lotus tells the story of Ximen Qing, a wealthy, unscrupulous merchant who takes the beautiful and ambitious widow Pan Jinlian as his fifth wife. Jinlian is not content to accept her position and schemes to dominate her husband and improve her standing in society by using sex as her weapon. As the story unfolds, Ximen Qing embarks on a series sexual conquests and Pan Jinlian exploits her husband's lust, ultimately causing the downfall of the entire fami
Trade Review"[
Golden Lotus is] a landmark in the development of the narrative art form--not only from a specifically Chinese perspective but in a world-historical contex….noted for its surprisingly modern technique and with the possible exception of
The Tale of Genji (c. 1010) and
Don Quixote (1605, 1615), there is no earlier work of prose fiction of equal sophistication in world literature." --
David Tod Roy, Scholar of Chinese literature"[
Golden Lotus is] the most famous of the novels of manners of the Ming dynasty [and is] in effect a condemnation of the whole ruling class." --
Lu Xun, Chinese writer, essayist and poet"
Golden Lotus was without precedent in China and was not to be equaled in sophistication…for another two centuries." --
Robert Hegel, Scholar of Chinese literature
