Journey to the West Reading Order

Journey to the West (1592), attributed to Wu Cheng'en, is one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature and arguably the most globally influential Chinese narrative ever written — the source of the Monkey King, the character who has traveled from Tang dynasty pilgrimage narrative into anime, manga, comic books, video games, and children's television across the entire world. The novel follows the Buddhist monk Xuanzang (the historical Xuanzang who traveled to India in the seventh century) as he journeys westward to retrieve Buddhist scriptures from India, accompanied by three disciples acquired along the way: the irrepressible, shape-shifting monkey Sun Wukong; the gluttonous and lecherous pig-demon Zhu Bajie; and the water monster Sha Wujing. The journey encompasses ninety-nine demons and adventures spread across one hundred chapters; its comedy, its cosmology, and its endlessly inventive supernatural imagination have made it inexhaustible.