Anthony C Yu's translation of " The Journey to the West" initially published in 1983 introduced English-speaking audiences to the classic Chinese novel in its entirety for the first time Written in the sixteenth century " The Journey to the West" tells the story of the fourteen-year pilgrimage of the monk Xuanzang one of China's most famous religious heroes & his four supernatural disciples in search of Buddhist scriptures An adventure rich with danger & excitement this seminal work of the Chinese literary canon is by turns allegory satire & fantasy With one hundred chapters written in both prose & poetry " The Journey to the West" has always been a complicated & difficult text to render in English while preserving the lyricism of its language & the content of its plot But Yu has successfully taken on the task & in this new edition he has made his translations even more accurate & accessible The explanatory notes are updated & augmented & Yu has added much new material to his introduction based on his original research as well as on the newest literary criticism & scholarship on Chinese religious traditions He has also modernized the transliterations included in each volume using the now-standard Hanyu Pinyin romanization system Perhaps most important Yu has made changes to the translation itself in order to make it as precise as possible