Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Dream on

I don't think I mentioned that i finished 红楼梦, A Dream of Red Mansions, all two-thousand four-hundred fifty-nine pages of it. (The last volume came with me to Japan.) It's certainly a lot of book! My friend Q, who recommended it, still thinks I need to read it in the original. My friend H, who works in Chinese poetry, was most impressed to hear I'd completed it, then asked, hesitantly: "you read the Hawkes translation of course?" Um, no...