Journey to the West/The Monkey King

[Hatori]

Hello. As this falls under the section of literature I might as well post about this.
I know that this is a Chinese novel and is somewhat popular in Japan, I was wondering if anybody would recommend this book to me, a teenager.
I mean, this book is $40 at Borders, which angers me, and I'm not sure if I want to buy it and I just want to hear the input of others to see if it would actually be worth buying; and in one of my threads, you guys know I'm not to hot with history.
If you have any tidbits or interesting things to tell me about Journey to the West/The Monkey King, just post about it and I just want to hear a bit about it. Plus, if you have anything to discuss about this book... Be my guest. lol.

[small]Damn, after reading Saiyuki it makes me unsure to buy this $40 book. lol...[/small] :p

[AJBryant]

It kind of depends on the translation you are working with, but, yeah, it's a good read.

There's no way you should pay $40 for it, though.

There are MUCH cheaper editions -- including a four-volume one -- at Amazon.com.

Try http://www.amazon.com/Journey-West-4-Bo ... 119016636/
and http://www.amazon.com/Monkey-Journey-We ... 590302583/

Tony

[ss]

This is indeed a fascinating classical novel. Monkey King (Sun Wukong) is almost every child's favorite character.

Sun Wukong (Monkey King) learned all the magic tricks and skills from a Taoist Master, after which, he was able to transform himself into 72 different images, anything and anyone, such as a young girl, an old man or woman, a bird, a tree, an insect as small as a mosquito so as to sneak into an enemy's belly to wage an arduous fight. He could travel 180,000 miles a single somersault. He has an iron bar that could expand or shrink at his command. He has a pair of special sharp eyes that can see through evil demons in every shape and size.

Yet, being extremely smart and capable, the only *person* that he afraid of and deeply respected and honored was ?? . Make a guess. ^_^

One good thing that I admired him was that he managed to keep the faith and reached his goal despite a long hard journey. B)