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PU SONGLING (1645-1715) was a poor, undistinguished scholar who had an uneventful life. He took the lowest degree, the bachelor's, before he was twenty, but ten years later, he still had not succeeded in passing the second, the master's degree, due to his neglect of the standard fields of academic study. His loss of personal status is the world's gain, however, because his overriding interest was in tales of the supernatural, and his collected works, the bible of Chinese supernatural folktales.
Magical and wondrously entertaining . . . Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio overflows with ghosts, demons, monsters, monks, magicians, revived corpses, gods and fox-spirits. . . . [It] calls to mind a collection of mildly racy club stories or lost episodes of The Twilight Zone. . . . Fast paced, surprisingly light in tone, emotionally cool, wryly humorous-these uncanny tales, often just one or two pages long, might almost be adult bedtime stories. . . . Reading this beloved classic provides a particularly enjoyable way to help celebrate Chinese New Year. -The Washington Post
