Monkey depicts the adventures of Prince Tripitaka, a young Buddhist priest on a dangerous pilgrimage to India to retrieve sacred scriptures accompanied by his three unruly disciples: the greedy pig creature Pipsy, the river monster Sandy & Monkey. Hatched from a stone egg & given the secrets of heaven & earth, the irrepressible trickster Monkey can ride on the clouds, become invisible & transform into other shapes skills that prove very useful when the four travellers come up against the dragons, bandits, demons & evil wizards that threaten to prevent them in their quest. Wu Ch`eng-en wrote Monkey in the mid-sixteenth century, adding his own distinctive style to an ancient Chinese legend, & in so doing created a dazzling combination of nonsense with profundity, slapstick comedy with spiritual wisdom.