A review by blackoutcity44
The Dream of the Red Chamber by Tsao Hsueh-Chin

4.0

I believe this is a shortened version of what the volumes of the penguin classics version is. I see a lot of people being upset that the names are hard to follow but that’s just part of the book. It’s a long extending story that has every character with their own family history as well as extensions. The way things are connected is a spiderweb.

It talks about bigger themes of fate and life while focusing on small everyday occurrences. Also the fact that it was written 300 years ago gives a good insight into how things were perceived back then and the social relationships between everyone. I think this book definitely is better in Chinese, the language does not translate over well. Eventually that’s the goal