Outlaws of the Marsh Reading Order

Shuǐhǔ Zhuàn (Outlaws of the Marsh, also translated as Water Margin or All Men Are Brothers, c. 14th century) attributed to Shi Nai'an is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature — a vast popular epic of 108 outlaws who gather on the marsh stronghold of Liangshan and resist corrupt imperial officials in Song Dynasty China. The novel's narrative structure is additive rather than linear: hero after hero is recruited to the outlaw band, each through a characteristic story of injustice, defeat of a corrupt official, or accidental killing that places them outside society. The heroes include the tattooed monk Lu Zhishen, the tiger-slaying Wu Song, the black warrior Li Kui, and the clever strategist Wu Yong, among the most vividly realized characters in Chinese popular literature. Shuǐhǔ Zhuàn belongs to the tradition of the Chinese episodic novel — closer to the serial tale than the European novel of unified narrative — and its pleasures are those of individual episodes rather than developing plot. Its political vision is ambivalent: the outlaws ultimately seek amnesty from the emperor rather than the overthrow of imperial authority, and the novel's account of the campaign against internal and external enemies that follows their amnesty ends in near-total destruction of the band. This is one of the great anti-heroic narratives in world literature: the outlaws' struggle is magnificent, and their end is squalid.