The Monkey and the Monk (Abridged Edition by Anthony C. Yu)
A condensed single-volume English selection based on Anthony C. Yu's four-volume complete translation, preserving the original's religious allegory and literary spirit.
The Monkey and the Monk is a single-volume abridgment of Journey to the West, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2006 by the Chinese-American scholar Yu Guofan. The work is derived from his complete four-volume English translation completed between 1977 and 1983—the latter of which is hailed as the most academically authoritative translation of Journey to the West in the English-speaking world. Spanning approximately five hundred and twenty-eight pages, this abridged edition was personally selected and rearranged by the translator. It preserves the chapters with the greatest dramatic tension and intellectual depth, allowing the characters and adventures of the five pilgrims—Xuanzang, Sun Wukong, Bai Longma, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing—to be presented in a concentrated form. Yu Guofan intentionally retained the original's interspersed poetry and Buddhist-Taoist philosophical reflections, ensuring that readers can grasp the overall narrative within a reasonable length without losing the religious allegory, humorous satire, and mythological wonder of the original work. This version is widely used as a designated textbook for East Asian literature courses in North American universities.