The Monkey is an abridged translation of Journey to the West, a Chinese sixteenth-century novel by Wu Chengen, a poet and novelist who lived during the Ming dynasty. This novel is amongst the Four Great Classical Novels of the Chinese literature....

In ancient Eastern society, written novels eventually rose to a prominent place in culture, following upon a long tradition of oral accounts and short works such as poetry. In addition, with strict government policy on content, many authors and...