Journey to the West

Journey to the West is a Chinese novel published in the 16th century during the Ming dynasty and attributed to Wu Cheng'en. It is regarded as one of the great Chinese novels, and has been described as arguably the most popular literary work in East Asia. The novel is a fictionalized and fantastic account of the pilgrimage of the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang, who travelled to India in the 7th century AD to seek out and collect Buddhist scriptures. It retains the broad outline of Xuanzang's own account, Records of the Western Regions, but embellishes it with fantasy elements from folk tales and the author's invention, including the early exploits of the monkey Sun Wukong, who becomes Xuanzang's first disciple. Enduringly popular, the novel is simultaneously a comic adventure, a satire of Chinese bureaucracy, a source of spiritual reflection, and a rich allegory.