In Search of the Supernatural: The Written Record

This is the first complete translation into a Western language of Sou-shen Chi, a fourth-century collection of 464 extraordinary, fantastic and bizarre anecdotes and narratives. Sou-shen Chi, is the oldest, richest, and most consulted example of the chih-kuai genre, an important division of classical Chinese literature demonstrating features of narrative technique and authorial sensibility that point to chih-kuai as the earliest examples of Chinese fiction. Of the three surviving versions of Sou-shen Chi, the twenty-chapter edition translated here is widely accepted as the best representation of the work of its compiler, Kan Pao, the official court historian for Emperor Yuan of the Chin dynasty. Sou-shen Chi served as a model for subsequent collections and provided many basic plots, characters, and situations for plays, novels, and even poetry for future generations.