The Peach Blossom Fan (New York Review Books Classics)

A tale of battling armies, political intrigue, star-crossed romance, and historical cataclysm, The Peach Blossom Fan is one of the masterpieces of Chinese literature, a vast dramatic composition that combines the range and depth of a great novel with the swift intensity of film.

In the mid-1640s, famine sweeps through China. The Ming dynasty, almost 300 years old, lurches to a bloody end. Peking falls to the Manchus, the emperor hangs himself, and Ming loyalists take refuge in the southern capital of Nanking. Two valiant generals seek to defend the city, but nothing can overcome the corruption, decadence, and factionalism of the court in exile. The newly installed emperor cares for nothing but theater, leaving practical matters to the insidious Ma Shih-ying. Ma’s crony Juan Ta-ch’eng is as unscrupulous an operator as he is sophisticated a poet. He diverts resources from the starving troops in order to stage a spectacular production of his latest play. History, however, has little time for make-believe, though the earnest members of the Revival Club, centered on the handsome young scholar Hou Fang-yü and his lover Fragrant Princess, struggle to discover a happy ending.

• The Peony Pavilion: Mudan ting, Second Edition
• The Story of the Western Wing
• Six Records of a Floating Life (Penguin Classics)
• Six Yuan Plays (Penguin Classics)
• Master Tung's Western Chamber Romance (Tung Hsi-Hsiang Chu-Kung-Tiao : A Chinese Chantefable)
• Chushingura: The Treasury of Loyal Retainers
• Monks, Bandits, Lovers, and Immortals: Eleven Early Chinese Plays
• The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber, Vol. 1: The Golden Days
• A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy
• Four Major Plays of Chikamatsu