The Carnal Prayer Mat

Li Yu, playwright, essayist and the wittiest writer of his century, wrote this notorious comic novel about Weiyang Sheng, a young scholar who believes pleasure is the highest good. Refusing a monk's advice, he sets off to seduce the most beautiful women of his time, and every one of his adventures comes back to punish him. The Carnal Prayer Mat is a satire of desire that ends, improbably, on a prayer mat. This is a complete new English translation, with names in modern pinyin and the text rendered as plain, readable English prose. For adult readers: the book contains explicit sexual content. It is one of the long narratives that shaped Chinese fiction, full of household detail, comedy and grief, and it reads straight through like any great novel.