A collectible hardcover edition of one of the all-time great fantasy novels—which Neil Gaiman
has said “is in the DNA of 1.5 billion people”—in an acclaimed one-volume translation and
featuring an illustrated foreword by the author of the New York Times bestselling graphic novel
that is the basis for the Disney+ series American Born Chinese starring Michelle Yeoh Ke Huy
Quan and Stephanie Hsu A Penguin Vitae Edition Before there was The Lord of the Rings
there was China’s Monkey King . The title character also known as Sun Wukong is a
shape-shifting trickster on a kung-fu quest for eternal life and is beloved by fans of the
most popular anime of all time Dragon Ball and the world’s largest e-sport the video game
League of Legends . For raiding Heaven’s Orchard of Immortal Peaches the Buddha pins him
beneath a mountain and frees him only five hundred years later. To redeem himself our
irrepressible rogue hero has to protect the pious monk Tripitaka on his fourteen-year journey
to India in search of precious Buddhist sutras. Accompanied by two other fallen immortals—Pigsy
a rice-loving pig able to fly with its ears and Sandy a depressive man-eating river-sand
monster—Monkey King undergoes eighty-one trials doing battle with all manner of dragons ogres
wizards and femmes fatales in this rollicking adventure that not only stands as the most
popular of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature but also gave us one of the
most memorable superheroes in world literature. Penguin Vitae—loosely translated as “Penguin
of one’s life”—is a deluxe hardcover series from Penguin Classics celebrating a dynamic and
diverse landscape of classic fiction and nonfiction from seventy-five years of classics
publishing. Penguin Vitae provides readers with beautifully designed classics that have shaped
the course of their lives and welcomes new readers to discover these literary gifts of
personal inspiration intellectual engagement and creative originality.
