Description
Imagine if a national political figure like Benjamin Franklin was also a paranormal investigator, one who wrote up his investigations with a storytelling flair that reads like a combination of M.R. James, Lafcadio Hearn, and Zhuangzi-with a dash of the bureaucratic absurdism of Kafka sprinkled in, alongside a healthy dose of H.P. Lovecraft's weird antiquarianism. In China, at roughly the same time that Franklin was filling the sky with electrified kites, there was such a figure. He was Special Advisor to the emperor of China, Imperial Librarian, and one of the most celebrated scholars and poets of his time. His name was Ji Yun (纪昀).
Beginning in 1789, Ji Yun published five volumes of weird tales and ghost stories that combined supernatural autobiographical accounts with early speculative fictions. Combining insights into Chinese magic and metaphysics with tales of cannibal villages, sentient fogs, alien encounters, and fox spirits; as well as accounts of soul swapping, haunted cities, and the "jiangshi" (the Chinese vampire), there is no literary work quite like that of Ji Yun.
Author: Yi Izzy Yu, Yun Ji
Publisher: Empress Wu Books
Published: 06/05/2021
Pages: 338
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.85lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.25w x 0.76d
ISBN13: 9781953124012
ISBN10: 1953124011
BISAC Categories:
- Body, Mind & Spirit | Supernatural (Incl. Ghosts)
- Literary Criticism | Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology
- Social Science | Folklore & Mythology
This title is not returnable