Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3978726 in Books
• Published on: 2000-01-01
• Original language: Chinese
• Number of items: 5
• Binding: Library Binding
• 3080 pages

Customer Reviews

One of the world's great folk-novels, but the translation is problematic
Outlaws of the Marsh, better known to British audiences as 'the Water Margin', after the popular Japanese series shown on BBC in the 1970s, is one of the four great classical Chinese novels, and a masterpiece of folk-tale in novel form. It catalogues the complex and sometimes seemingly haphazard adventures of a group of bandits who join together in the Liang Shang marshes, resisting the cruelty of Gao Qiu during the Song dynasty.

This is an enormously engrossing read, with a compelling chapter to chapter progression which it makes it very hard to put the books down. By turns comic, tragic, thrilling, base and noble, this is a book that really does have something for everyone.

There are three problems for Western readers coming to this novel through this translation.

First, the moral background to this novel is entirely different from anything in Western literature. This was rather sanitised for the TV series, which prefaces every episode with 'in a world very different from our own', and casts the whole thing as rebellion against injustice. The novel, however, is altogether more difficult. Sometimes things are done to resist oppression, sometimes they are done out of filial loyalty, sometimes for revenge, sometimes because people are drunk, and sometimes with no more justification than that the perpetrators are bandits, and therefore have a right to do such things. At times the author appeals to the moral indignation of the reader, but at other times he glosses over atrocities which go as far as cannibalism. Most modern readers will also have questions about the casual mistreatment of women throughout the novel, by both sides.

Secondly, with more than 150 characters, and four densely printed volumes, there is an awful lot of this to read and follow. Readers who are well-used to Chinese names will struggle less with this, but just keeping track of who is who is quite an undertaking. The episodic structure also picks up a character for a few chapters and then leaves him behind. This is not a flaw in the writing -- rather, it's a different approach to storytelling and the novel from the one we are used to, though readers of medieval literature will find it more familiar.

Finally, the translation is not entirely complete. The purpose of translation should be to render the original accurately into the new language so that it sounds as though it had been written in that language. Sidney Shapiro, a Chinese-naturalised Jewish-American scholar, does not quite achieve this. Somehow the style of writing is all mixed up, bringing epic words such as 'in twain' next to 'ass-hole', and riper language. On the other hand, Chinese scholars consider this to be much more accurate than Pearl Buck's hugely popular 1933 version entitled 'All Men are Brothers'. Rather than seeing 'Outlaws of the Marsh' as a bad translation, it is probably best to see it as incompletely edited. The translation is also not helped by the print production, which has several typographical errors on each page, thanks to poor proof-reading by the Beijing Foreign Language Press.

Interestingly, Outlaws of the Marsh was Mao Ze Dong's favourite novel, and he considered it the inspiration for a number of his military strategies.

Five stars for the novel, then, less half a star for the translation and another half for the print. Outlaws of the Marsh would be on my list of '100 novels translated into English that ought to be read', both for its own sake, and for its cultural importance.

staggering achievement, and a great read
This two-thousand page monster of a book is phenomenal. The most immediately apparent thing about the book to someone not used to Chinese literature, such as myself, is how modern the language is: the majority of English texts from this time are appaling to read simply because of the tortuous nature of the langauge, no matter how good the book (the excellent Le Morte D'Arthur, for example).

The book consistes of the tales of 108 outlaws and their adventures and missions against the corrupt and heartless government. The stories cover all areas of human life and emotion, each of the myriad characters is well defined and many are extremely memorable (Sagacious Lu the tatooed monk, for example: a hard-drinking, hard-fighting priest who fights with an 80-100 pound iron-shod staff!).

The book is an enormous soap-opera for want of a better word: epic in scale and scope it is brimming with romance and adventure- with the occasional influence of magic on the proceedings. The battles are enormous and majestic, the brawls often bloody and brutal. It is often easy to forget the book was written close on eight hundred years ago. The notes and afetrword by the translator are enlightening and often amusing.

A must to anyone who loved `The Water Margin' on TV, or loves martial arts movies- a great read that offers a lot of insights into historical chinese culture and has some of the best nicknames to ever appear in a book!

An overlooked masterpiece of storytelling
Do not be put off by the size of this book, it comes in a 4 volume box and is an epic. The first volume could be considered as a collection of tales and amusing stories about different characters. The second book is the coming togheter of these characters, 108 of them. The third book is thier forming and defence, and the final book shows thier downfall.

This book is truly an epic soap opera, some of the stories are so hillarious and so is some of the dialouge. However a word of warning, you will fall in love with the main characters and this is almost a shakesperian tragedy in its nature of the dilema the characters face and thier fall. Some examples of stories are:
Figthing a tiger on a mountain top
Getting very drunk (happens a lot)
Bar fights and prisonbreaks
Stories of lust and trechary
Epic battles
Buddist knowlege and nature

It is a very worth while read and probably one of the best books ive ever read.