I've been reading a lot of "difficult" books recently, and a few short books that just weren't very good. Amid that pile, Pu's tales were a glorious reminder of why people enjoy telling stories, why people enjoy reading them, and how many different ways something can be interesting.

Short of listing

Άνθρωποι, ζώα και παράξενα πλάσματα ζουν σε έναν κόσμο σαν αυτόν που ξέρουμε αλλά και αυτόν που δεν βλέπουμε. Οι ιστορίες του Που Σονγκλίνγκ είναι πιο πολύ λαϊκά παραμύθια, γεμάτα μαγεία και υπερφυσικά στοιχεία, κάνουν τον πολιτισμό των Κινέζων οικείο (χελόου Αίσωπε) αλλά και άγνωστο.

Αν αφήνει μία

"Read these tales properly, and they will make you strong and brave; read them in the wrong way, and they will possess you."
- Feng Zhenluan
Early nineteenth century commentator on the Strange Tales

I honestly don’t know how to begin with reviewing a book like this. Normally with short story collection

According to John Minford (whose translation in the Penguin edition of some of these strange tales is my preferred translation of this book: Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), what readers are about to experience here are

"longer stories with complex plots, often involving relationships between m

《聊齋誌異》的經典選篇，而非全集

nicely terped

although the selected stories are not in the round(you know, at that time, the terp translated this directly from classical chinese, it was so hard, absolutely much more harder than reading old english, such as BEOWULF, for me), but it still gives me a fresh stunning exp

This is the kind of book that, when read carefully, can transform the English reader from perfect ignorance of Chinese culture to nerd-like engagement with aesthetics, society, history, mythology, folklore, science, medicine, technology, and the list goes on and on. It's really worth remembering how