Where to start with the Chinese classical novels
Three Kingdoms begins with war and political consequence; Journey to the West, Water Margin, and Dream of the Red Chamber change the temperature.
Four multi-volume novels sit behind the phrase ‘Chinese classics,’ and you want to know what kind of world each one contains.
Starting with Dream of the Red Chamber because it is the most prestigious, drowning in the family genealogies in the first hundred pages, and concluding the Chinese classical novel is for specialists. Or reading any one of them in an outdated translation when a good modern one would do the same work in half the time.
Books in order
- Romance of the Three Kingdoms — Read in a modern translation, abridged is fine for a first read. The novel is plot-driven and the famous set pieces — the oath in the peach garden, the burning of the chains, the empty city — are the spine. Read for the brotherhood and the betrayal; the politics will follow.
- Journey to the West — Sun Wukong the Monkey King, Tripitaka the patient monk, the long pilgrimage west. Funnier and warmer than its reputation suggests. Read the early Monkey chapters first; they are the most buoyant.
- Water Margin — A hundred and eight outlaws gathered on a marsh in northern China. Long, episodic, picaresque — closer to a Robin Hood cycle than to a single novel. Read it after Three Kingdoms; the political world is familiar and the form is looser.
- Dream of the Red Chamber — The most demanding and the most rewarded by patience. A wealthy family, a love triangle, hundreds of named characters, a slow domestic decline. Read it last; the earlier three have given you the narrative habits the book asks for.