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Rare Cao Xuequin 1st edit/1st print Story of the Stone Volume 1 the Golden Days Penguin Classics 1980 [Hardcover] Cao Xuequin (David Hicks Trans [Hardcover] Cao Xuequin (David Hicks Trans
This rare and vintage book is a perfect addition to any bibliophile's collection
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1980
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November 20, 2025
Of the five great Chinese novels, I’d previously read a condensed version of Journey to the West, which is an accessible, rollicking mythological adventure. Now I’ve read Volume 1 of Cao Xueqin’s The Story of the Stone, often known as The Dream of the Red Chamber.
I also have an unexpurgated version of the Gladys Yang translation as a kindle book on my phone, which is 3,817 pages long. I strongly doubt I’ll ever read the other volumes.
It’s not poorly written, as best I can judge, but I can’t begin to grasp the cultural nuances of the text which I’m assured are there, especially issues related to gender and class relations. Without sufficient knowledge of traditional Chinese culture, I couldn’t tell which interactions were meaningful and which were not.
It also complicates things that there are so many characters. Wikipedia notes that there are nearly 40 major characters, and over 400 additional ones. It honestly took me 200 pages to figure out which characters I should be paying attention to. Shades of War and Peace.
The style of writing, to a Westerner, seems extremely narrative driven and flat. The characters don’t seem three-dimensional and don’t develop much over 500+ pages. This gave me insight into the flat writing style of Lui Cixin’s 2006 science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem, but it didn’t make me enjoy the style more than before.
Because the subtleties of the interactions among characters were lost on me, the book mainly reminded me of a never-ending, somewhat pointless Hispanic telenovela. Mea culpa, the fault lies in my ignorance.
I also have an unexpurgated version of the Gladys Yang translation as a kindle book on my phone, which is 3,817 pages long. I strongly doubt I’ll ever read the other volumes.
It’s not poorly written, as best I can judge, but I can’t begin to grasp the cultural nuances of the text which I’m assured are there, especially issues related to gender and class relations. Without sufficient knowledge of traditional Chinese culture, I couldn’t tell which interactions were meaningful and which were not.
It also complicates things that there are so many characters. Wikipedia notes that there are nearly 40 major characters, and over 400 additional ones. It honestly took me 200 pages to figure out which characters I should be paying attention to. Shades of War and Peace.
The style of writing, to a Westerner, seems extremely narrative driven and flat. The characters don’t seem three-dimensional and don’t develop much over 500+ pages. This gave me insight into the flat writing style of Lui Cixin’s 2006 science fiction novel The Three-Body Problem, but it didn’t make me enjoy the style more than before.
Because the subtleties of the interactions among characters were lost on me, the book mainly reminded me of a never-ending, somewhat pointless Hispanic telenovela. Mea culpa, the fault lies in my ignorance.
Displaying 1 of 1 review