The Monkey King

One of the most famous works of Chinese literature, Journey to the West, was first published in Czech in 1961 and the Czech children also remember Sun Wokong, the Monkey God, from a TV series aired here in the 1990s. In 2014 Jan Jiráň adapted the classic tale for a play released on 4CDs and now he has abridged it into four chapters of a children’s book. This allowed for more space for Zdeněk Sklenář’s colorful illustrations from the original Czech edition of the Monkey King. The font in the volume changes in size just as does the monkey’s golden rod, the prototype of all magic wands, enhancing the connection between the texts and illustrations.