Dream of the Red Chamber Author:Tsao Hsueh-Chin Dream of the Red Chamber is by common consent China's greatest novel. It describes the life of two households in Peking, belonging to the same family, in which five generations live together with their innumerable retainers, servants, relatives, and other hangers-on. One generation is the particular concern of the author: a group of sisters, ... more »half sisters, and cousins, among whom is one boy;the hope of the great house of Chia. The love of this boy and his cousin is the central theme of the novel; but around this is woven the complex life of the two great palaces and of the capital itself, from which emerges a rich picture of the character and quality of one of the world's great civilizations.
DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER was written in the eighteenth century; Chi-chen Wang, professor of Chinese at Colombia University , has devoted many years of his life to re-creating it in English. A first version of his translation-adaptation was published with an introduction by Arthur Waley in 1929. Recently Professor Wang published a greatly expanded and completely rewritten version of DREAM OF THE RED CHAMBER, which he adapted especially for this Anchor book edition.« less