A saga of ruthless ambition, murder, and lust, The Golden Lotus (Jin Ping Mei) has been called the fifth Great Classical Novel in Chinese literature and one of the Four Masterworks of the Ming novel. Admired in its own time for its literary qualities and biting indictment of the immorality and cruelty of its age, it has also been denigrated as a dirty book for its sexual frankness. It centers on Ximen Qing, a wealthy, young, dissolute, and politically connected merchant, and his marriage to a fifth wife, Pan Jinlian, literally Golden Lotus. In her desire to influence her husband and, through him, control the other wives, concubines, and entire household, she uses sex as her main weapon. The Golden Lotus lays bare the rivalries within this wealthy family while chronicling its rise and fall. It fields a host of vivid characters, each seeking advantage in a corrupt world.

Author Biography

Lanling Xiaoxiaosheng wrote The Golden Lotus during the early years of the Wanji era (1573-1620) of the Ming Empire. Nothing certain is known of Lanling's life. Clement Egerton was at various times a senior officer in the British army, an Anglican bishop, and a writer, editor, linguist, and prolific photographer, but he is best known for his enduring translation of The Golden Lotus. Shu Qingchun boarded with Clement Egerton and his wife when he was a lecturer in Chinese at the School of Oriental Studies in London, but he became famous as the Beijing novelist and dramatist Lao She, whose best-known work may be Rickshaw Boy. He was killed, or committed suicide, during the Cultural Revolution. Robert Hegel is the Liselotte Dieckmann Professor of Comparative Literature and a professor of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.