For more than a century and half, Dream of the Red Chamber has been recognized by sophisticated readers in China as the greatest of its novels. In it we experience the lives of two households in Peking, belonging to the same family, in which five generations live together with their innumerable retainers, servants, relatives, and other hangers-on.


One generation is the particular concern of the author: a group of sisters, half sisters, and cousins, among whom is one boy, the hope of the great house of China. The love of this boy and his cousin-a Romeo and Juliet story-is the central theme of the novel; but around them is woven the complex life of the two great palaces and of the capital itself. What emerges is a rich portrait of one of the world's great civilizations.