One of the Four Great Classical Novels of China, rooted in the real seventh-century pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang but transformed over centuries into something else entirely. Its hero is Sun Wukong, the Monkey King — stone-born, master of seventy-two transformations, briefly at war with Heaven itself — tamed and set to guard a timid Buddhist monk on the road west to India. Riotous and funny on the surface, the novel is also a Buddhist allegory of enlightenment. Traditionally attributed to Wu Cheng'en in the sixteenth century, it remains among the most beloved stories across East and Southeast Asia.
A monkey born from a stone learns immortality, masters seventy-two transformations, and steals a magic iron staff that can shrink to a needle or grow to colossal size. Then he declares war on Heaven. He fights the entire celestial army to a standstill, until the Buddha himself traps him under a mountain for five hundred years. This is only the first seventh of the book. The rest sends that humbled, brilliant, rowdy Monkey to guard a gentle monk on a long road west to fetch the holy scriptures, through a world thick with demons. Journey to the West is the rowdiest, most beloved adventure in Chinese literature, and Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, may be the most famous character it ever produced.