Slapping the Table in Amazement

Forty more tales of the extraordinary hidden within ordinary life - lovers deceived and revenged, fortunes lost and found, crimes exposed by fate, and justice delivered in the strangest ways.

Published by Ling Mengchu in 1632 as the sequel to his celebrated first collection, Slapping the Table in Amazement: Second Collection (二刻拍案驚奇) completes one of the great vernacular story collections of classical Chinese literature. Drawing again from folk legends, court cases, romances, and unofficial histories, these tales push further into the dark and the comic, the erotic and the karmic, painting a vivid portrait of late Ming dynasty society in all its complexity.

This is the first complete English translation of the Second Collection, rendered directly from the Ming dynasty original.

Rediscover the great epics, mysteries and chronicles of dynastic China: gods and generals, swindlers and scholars, courtesans, ghosts and emperors, in complete English translations.