The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 2 by Cao Xueqin

It purports to tell to two parallel stories. Coming in at around 800,000 words, it’s one third longer than War and Peace and clocks in as the longest novel I have ever read by a considerable margin. So how, then, to describe it? Well, it’s long.

And undefinable - is it a tragedy? Epic family saga? Romance? You cannot reduce it to mere labels like that. “The beast of a thousand legs is a long time dying.” That’s what strikes me most about reading this novel: how subtly, beautifully, almost unbearably quiet it is like story of an age is being conveyed in series of whispered bedtime stories with the aim not to shock, nor frighten, the listening child, but inspire in them a rising sense of this great, vast, other world, and the people who fill it. Most call it the single most important piece of Chinese literature, and with some even naming it the book of the millennium.Īnd yet it’s quiet. For lack of a better place to start, here are some of the key facts: written around 1760 by Cao Xueqin, later completed by Gao E after the former’s death, it is counted as one of the four Chinese classics (along with Water Margin (reviewed here), Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West).

What is there left to say about the book that has spawned hundreds of years of Chinese culture, its own branch of academic study, countless adaptations and re-writings, and changed the world’s literary canon as we know it?Īnswer: not much and everything. Through the changing fortunes of the Jia family, this rich, magical work sets worldly events – love affairs, sibling rivalries, political intrigues, even murder – within the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion and karma determines the shape of our lives. The first part of the story, The Golden Days, begins the tale of Bao-yu, a gentle young boy who prefers girls to Confucian studies, and his two cousins: Bao-chai, his parents’ choice of a wife for him, and the ethereal beauty Dai-yu. 1760) is one of the greatest novels of Chinese literature.

The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin (in five volumes, translated by David Hawkes)

The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 2 by Cao Xueqin