DESCRIPTION:

A Dream of Red Mansions is the greatest classic Chinese novel written by Cao Xueqin in the mid-eighteenth century.
By that time, there had appeared in china first embryos of capitalism and the author had formed some rudimentary ideas of democracy. With the prosperity and decline of the wealthy and influential jia and Xue families and the love between Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu as the main threads of the story, the novel unfolds a historical painting scroll of great length, laying bare and criticizing sharply the imperial civil service examination system, marriage system, social estate system and moral concepts of feudal society. It portrays numerous immortal artistic types, each with a distinct individuality, all standing out with radiant splendour in the history of Chinese and world literature.
The novel has made a breakthrough in the traditional single-thread development of plots and characters, and created a grand, integral and natural artistic structure in which numerous characters move about in the same place at the same time without disturbing the unity of the plots. This exhibits the extraordinary artistic talent of the author.
The linguistic attainments of A dream of Red Mansions represent the very height of the classic Chinese novels. Each of the typical characters in the novel has his or her own idiosyncratic speech. A few words of his or her own are good enough to outline the lifelike character's personality and, therefore, for the reader to tell who is who.
In terms of both ideological content and artistic attainments, A Dream of red Mansions, which has reached the zenith of the creation of classic Chinese novels, is a rare masterpiece even in the history of world literature.

Set of 3 hardcover volumes, available as a set only.

漢英對照：紅樓夢 全套共3冊
譯作者： 曹雪芹等著 楊憲益等譯
出版社：外文出版社

【內容提要】：

《紅樓夢》是中國最偉大的一部古典長施展小說。它描寫了一個由盛而衰的貴族大家庭中的愛情婚姻悲劇，並以此為中心，展開了一幅廣闊而生動的社會歷史生活畫 面，塑造出賈寶玉、林黛玉等眾多光彩奪目、令人難以忘懷的人物形象。《紅樓夢》以其宏大精緻的小說結構，博大精深的文化內涵，以及出色的語言藝術，被公認 為中國古典小說藝術的頂峰。
《紅樓夢》成書於18世紀中葉，作者曹雪芹性格傲岸、才華橫溢，使這部小說的個性色彩十分濃厚。小說歷經10 年寫成，八十回以後惜未傳，現存後四十回由高鶚續成。《紅樓夢》成書後流傳極廣，版本極多，從成書伊始，它就吸引了一大批知名的文人學者去評論和研究它，並形成至今仍很活躍的一門專學���紅學�。
《紅樓夢》從19世紀至今，已被譯成多種文字在全世界流傳。本譯本系中國著名的文學翻譯家楊憲益、戴乃迭夫婦所譯，它是一部最接近原著的《紅樓夢》英文全譯本。