The famous Chinese writer Pu Songling (1640–1715) was a man of enormous poetic talent, who knew all the secrets of the Chinese language down to the smallest details—from the oldest traditions to those contemporary to him. As the academician V. M. Alekseev wrote, Pu Songling “revived the language, pulled it out from the barns of erudition, and let it loose into the whirlwind of ordinary life.”
The content of his stories revolves around a peculiar and supernatural, but behind the unusual lies real life, depicted with virtuosity and a talent that makes his books “a genuine literary feast for the reader.”