Dream of the Red Chamber

About

In the sprawling Jia family compound, young Baoyu grows up surrounded by his female cousins and their maids, drifting through a world of poetry, silk, and elaborate ritual. His love for the fragile, brilliant Lin Daiyu forms the emotional center of a novel that encompasses hundreds of characters, political intrigue, Buddhist philosophy, and the slow, magnificent decline of an aristocratic dynasty. Written in the eighteenth century and considered the pinnacle of Chinese fiction, Dream of the Red Chamber generated an entire academic field — Redology — devoted to its interpretation. Cao Xueqin drew from his own family's fall from imperial favor to create a work of autobiographical fiction so rich that scholars have spent centuries untangling its layers. The novel that defined Chinese literature — a portrait of beauty, impermanence, and the impossibility of holding onto the world as it dissolves around you.