Cases of Judge Peng

When imperial China was at peace under Emperor Kangxi, justice still flickered in the hearts of men - and in the hand of one incorruptible magistrate.

Cases of Judge Peng (彭公案) is a vast and enthralling legal-heroic saga from the late Qing dynasty, written by the enigmatic author Tanmengdaoren. Long regarded as one of China’s great “casebook novels” (gong’an xiaoshuo), it follows the upright official Peng Gong as he exposes corruption, rescues the innocent, and restores moral order across the empire.

Blending the intellectual intrigue of detective fiction with the moral grandeur of Confucian justice, Cases of Judge Peng stands beside The Cases of Judge Bao and Water Margin as a cornerstone of Chinese popular literature. Yet until now, it has never appeared in full English translation.

This First Complete English Edition, translated and introduced by Valentin Sarić, presents the unabridged novel in modern, lucid English - preserving the rhythm, humor, and ethical depth of the original.

• Translator’s Note:

This edition was produced through a trilingual translation and refinement process: the original Chinese text was first rendered into English using advanced AI linguistic tools, then re-translated into Croatian for stylistic and semantic cross-checking, before being re-crafted in final English by the translator. This recursive approach - Chinese → English → Croatian → English - ensures that no nuance, rhythm, or moral tone of the source text is lost, yielding a translation that feels at once faithful, resonant, and alive.

• Features:
• Complete translation from the original Chinese text
• Scholarly introduction on the gong’an (court-case) tradition
• Restored names and place references for clarity and authenticity
• Faithful trilingual refinement process for linguistic precision
• Ideal for readers of classical Chinese literature, scholars, and lovers of world epics

Meet the original detective heroes of Chinese literature. Long before modern crime fiction, China’s gong’an novels followed brilliant magistrates who solved impossible cases, exposed corruption and delivered justice to the powerless.