Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en

Backlisted

Backlisted Podcast

Hobbies, Leisure, Books, Arts

4.7 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2025

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time, joins John and Andy for a tour of Monkey King: Journey to the West by Wu Cheng'en, the sixteenth-century fable widely regarded as one of the most important Chinese novels ever written, newly translated by Julia Lovell. The Monkey King's powers include shape-shifting, immortality and "being incredibly rude"; listeners of a certain age will be familiar with his legendary exploits - and those of his travelling companions Pigsy, Sandy and Tripitaka - from the 1980s cult TV series Monkey, a staple of BBC2's week-night schedule. The book itself is a hugely entertaining combination of action caper, farce and religious allegory, analogous in some ways to The Pilgrim's Progress but with a lot more jokes and fighting. We throughly enjoyed chatting with Kaliane about Monkey King, her own writing and also her day job as an editor at Penguin Classics and we think you will feel the Monkey Magic too. All together now: "the spirit of Monkey was irrepressible!" * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes and exclusive writing, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books.
0:12.4	The book featured in today's show is Monkey King, Journey to the West, the 16th century classic novel attributed to Wu Chang'i.
0:28.9	I'm John Mitchinson, publisher at Boundless.
0:32.1	And I'm Andy Miller, the author of the Year of Reading Dangerously.
0:36.5	And today we welcome a new guest to Backlisted Collian Bradley.
0:39.9	Hello, Colleen. Hello, I'm very excited to be here.
0:45.7	Thank you for having me. Well, thank you for coming on. Collian is a British Cambodian writer and editor based in London. Her short stories have appeared in electric literature, Caterpulp, some such
0:50.8	stories and the Willow Herb Review, among others. She was the Willow Herb Review.
0:56.4	What's that?
0:57.9	It's a nature writing journal that specifically publishes nature writers from marginalised communities,
1:04.7	run by Jessica J. Lee, who is really, really great.
1:08.2	It really is great.
1:09.3	Good, good.
1:10.3	Well, let's devote this episode to the Willow Herbrew.
1:14.8	There we are.
1:16.9	Collian was the winner of the 2022 Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize
1:20.7	and the 2022 V.S. Pritchitts Short Story Prize as well.
1:25.9	Now, her debut novel, The Ministry of Time, was an instant Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller. Is that true?
1:36.6	Was it an instant? It was very startling. And then, of course, it fell off the list again. But that's fine.
1:45.5	But it's come back on again, right?
1:49.6	It's the paperback. It's come back on again. This is the coming Sunday. Congratulations.
1:56.0	It was chosen as one of the Observer's best debut novels of 2024. I love how in this, I hope you don't mind me saying, these two things are presented as like an equivalence. The Ministry of Time was chosen
	...

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