In addition to Journey to the West, another three of the six “master novels” of imperial China were completed during the Ming dynasty: The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a recounting of the civil war into which China plunged after the fall of the Han dynasty in AD 220; The Water Margin, a picaresque tale of twelfth-century outlaws; and The Plum in the Golden Vase, a sexually explicit chronicle of intrigue in a wealthy Ming household.
