Strange Tales from Liaozhai - Vol. 5The weird and whimsical short stories in Strange Tales from Liaozhai show their author, Pu Songling (1640-1715), to be both an explorer of the macabre, like Edgar Allan Poe, and a moralist, like Aesop. In this first complete translation of the collection's 494 stories into English, readers will encounter supernatural creatures, natural disasters, magical aspects of Buddhist and Daoist spirituality, and a wide range of Chinese folklore. Annotations are provided to clarify unfamiliar references or cultural allusions, and introductory essays have been included to explain facets of Pu Songling's work and to provide context for some of the unique qualities of his uncanny tales. This is the fifth of 6 volumes. |
From inside the book
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... official), experiences conflict in each of those past lives with the same individual (who is, respectively, a scholar, a little dog, and then a scholar again), until, in the course of his third incarnation, the younger man becomes the ...
... officials, and, indeed, in the course of the story she's eventually flogged. Among the “spirits of the green woods and the dark spaces,” whose company Pu Songling finds preferable to the “circumspect individuals” who laugh (1:3) at his ...
... officials, in order to have Yang arrested. Yang had already made his escape, and no one knew where to find him, so they went to the Yang family's hometown, and issued a document stating that Zhu was also wanted by the authorities. Zhu ...
... officials at the time had just put the Yang estate up for auction, so the nobleman bought it on Xing's behalf. The couple then went home, took out the taels from before, and paid for a basic staff and servants, but in ten days they'd ...
... official, performing all of his tasks with distinction. Whenever Zhao played host and offered his guests a game of chess, Lu would look on, signaling with his finger where his benefactor should move, and as a result Zhao always won ...