初刻拍案驚奇
By 凌濛初
Cover: Tea Boiling (明人煮茶图轴), hanging scroll, Palace Museum, Beijing by Unknown painter (Ming dynasty, years unknown) · Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Ling Mengchu's first collection of forty tales, which opens with the luckless merchant who makes a fortune from a basket of oranges. Strange and comic happenings among merchants, scholars and wives fill each short chapter. This book uses the racial and other slurs of its period as written; the Book Guide explains these words where they occur. This edition omits one or more passages of explicit sexual description; each omission is marked in the text. This edition omits one or more passages describing sexual acts involving children; each omission is marked in the text. This book contains scenes of violence as its author wrote them.
Summary written with Claude Sonnet 5.5.