Pu Songling, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio

 

The stories of Pu Songling (1640-1715) are some of the most gorgeous fantastic tales I’ve ever read. They’re full of surprise and grotesquerie and startlingly vivid textures. While they express the ideology of their time, they also manage to be subversive in many ways. The precision of their style is a great vehicle for the somehow culturally logical absurdities of the narratives. Unforgettable. I could read these stories over and over.