Kai Lung's Golden Hours

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful...
Review:

During a time of conflict and upheavel, a wandering story teller is arrested by a perfidious bureaucrat for the crime of appearing suspicious and being in the wrong place at the wrong time (and possible violations of the Patriot Act). Imprisoned, Kai Lung does not languish. Although his enemy has the ear of the local mandarin, Kai Lung is aided by a beautiful woman who possesses the mandarin's other ear. In the tradition of "The Arabian Nights" our hero intrigues the mandarin's interest, spinning tales by turn ironic, poignant and pointed. With each tale told, the sympathy of the mandarin, the frustration of the bureaucrat and the love between Kai Lung and his ally grow accordingly and Kai Lung survives another day.

This story is set in the China of long ago and related through the filter of an early twentieth century english writer. The courtly, overly flowery language is deliciously funny and displays a sly satiricism which reminds me of "Gulliver's Travels". A truly timeless gem which may be read on different levels by different ages.

Will Kai Lung survive? Yes, but you really should see how...


Rating:
Summary: Most Fitting for the Celestial Dragon Throne
Review: Delightful collection of tales and fables by one of the most wrongfully-neglected English writers of the 20th Century. The itinerant storyteller Kai Lung, with the assistance of the delectable Hwa Mei, must circumvent the evil machinations of Ming Shu by providing a tale suited to each arising occasion. I first read this book in the early 70's, when Lin Carter reissued it in his Ballantine Fantasy series, and fell in love with its sparkling wit and originality. It is a source of considerable perplexity (to me, anyway) and some chagrin that Bramah continues in obscurity--as a writer, he is non-pareil. Someone must reissue these things (4 in the series, I believe). Fortunately, any good library will retain copies, but once you have read them you'll want copies of your own (to sleep with, under your pillow). Sweet dreams.

Rating:
Summary: A Chinese Sheherazade
Review: Delightful collection of tales and fables by one of the most wrongfully-neglected English writers of the 20th Century. The itinerant storyteller Kai Lung, with the assistance of the delectable Hwa Mei, must circumvent the evil machinations of Ming Shu by providing a tale suited to each arising occasion. I first read this book in the early 70's, when Lin Carter reissued it in his Ballantine Fantasy series, and fell in love with its sparkling wit and originality. It is a source of considerable perplexity (to me, anyway) and some chagrin that Bramah continues in obscurity--as a writer, he is non-pareil. Someone must reissue these things (4 in the series, I believe). Fortunately, any good library will retain copies, but once you have read them you'll want copies of your own (to sleep with, under your pillow). Sweet dreams.

Rating:
Summary: You are too unworthy to read this most excellent book
Review: I tried to write my comments on Ernest Bramagh's Kai Lung's Golden Hours, which I just finished, in the same style:

In the opinion of this lowly reader, the esteemed author before our unworthy eyes has created a gem of the highest quality, polished by fine craft.

But you can only do this so long before you get frustrated, which is why you have to admire Bramagh, because he could maintain this oblique and ornate style throughout and still manage to tell a compelling and, more than often, extremely humorous story.

The titular character, Kai Lung, is a storyteller who runs afoul of the local authorities, in particular a rather nasty advisor. The problem is that Kai has set his eyes on a most beautiful young woman who is also highly desired by the advisor, and the mandarin in charge is quite corrupt. The one saving grace for Kai Lung is that the mandarin also likes a good story. Like Scherazade, Kai Lung is therefore in the positive of entertaining for his life, and that he is able to accomplish this is not due to the fragment of 1001 stories available to him, but also the help of his beloved (a fairly strong female character given the situation and the date this was written, 1922).

Not everyone will care for this book, because a style as circular and dense as this doesn't lead itself to the short-attention-span-generation (only James Branch Cabell has a more elaborate, yet beautiful, prose form in fantasy). I don't know what it was about the 1920s that enabled the creation of such great comedy (Bramagh, Cabell, P.G. Wodehouse [who first became popular as a novelist in the 1920s], Thorne Smith). Maybe it was the post-War jubiliation, the underground of prohibition, or the pre-Depression stockmarket? Not ours to wonder why, but just to enjoy and laugh.

Rating:
Summary: The kind of good reading that mass media displaced
Review: If you're here for the first time, then you have my sympathy on learning that this book is out of print. It's time for a re-issue--are you listening, Penguin Classics?

These stories are about a wandering storyteller, who gets into various jams and escapes with the aid of his silver tongue and an admiring coquette. For someone who apparently never visited China, and never even met that many Chinese, the verisimilitude Bramah achieves is amazing. This is an English child's storybook China, yet the stories themselves richly delight adults, too. The scene-setting is wonderful, but the real gem is the dialogue. Suave, sly, elliptically ceremonious, mock-abnegating--but you really have to read it to catch the flavor. Hillaire Belloc's introduction is on the money about how deceptively easy this style looks, and it is a great pity that more people do not have the opportunity to enjoy this and the other Kai Lung works today.

May your sleeves be filled with a sufficiency of taels, and may hungry and homeless ghosts find solace at your house-pole, and preserve your family tablets from the mischiefs of the lesser orders of the beings of the Upper Air...

Rating:
Summary: The kind of good reading that mass media displaced
Review: If you're here for the first time, then you have my sympathy on learning that this book is out of print. It's time for a re-issue--are you listening, Penguin Classics?

These stories are about a wandering storyteller, who gets into various jams and escapes with the aid of his silver tongue and an admiring coquette. For someone who apparently never visited China, and never even met that many Chinese, the verisimilitude Bramah achieves is amazing. This is an English child's storybook China, yet the stories themselves richly delight adults, too. The scene-setting is wonderful, but the real gem is the dialogue. Suave, sly, elliptically ceremonious, mock-abnegating--but you really have to read it to catch the flavor. Hillaire Belloc's introduction is on the money about how deceptively easy this style looks, and it is a great pity that more people do not have the opportunity to enjoy this and the other Kai Lung works today.

May your sleeves be filled with a sufficiency of taels, and may hungry and homeless ghosts find solace at your house-pole, and preserve your family tablets from the mischiefs of the lesser orders of the beings of the Upper Air...

Rating:
Summary: There's just one thing to say....
Review: The earlier reviewers of this book have said everything there is to say (and much better than I could have said it). I am the lucky possessor of a collected volume of all the Kai Lung stories. After having read Kai Lung's golden hours and the other books in the series, there was just one thing felt : a sense of profound sadness that there isn't more of Kai Lung to read!

I am adding this in 2003. I was wrong in writing that I have the entire collection of Kai Lung books. I learnt subsequently that there are a few missed out from my collection. For the records here is the complete list of the published Kai Lung stories :

The Wallet of Kai Lung
Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat
Kai Lung's Golden Hours
The Moon of Much Gladness (novel)
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree
Kai Lung: Six

The last apparently contains six Kai Lung stories previously published ONLY in Punch magazine; the print edition for this book ran into a mere 250 copies and was published by Tacoma: The Non-Profit Press, 1974.

I have only the following :

The Wallet of Kai Lung
Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat
Kai Lung's Golden Hours
Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree

Kai Lung: Six, unfortunately was published in a very limited number of copies and I am unable to acquire one at an affordable price. The Moon of Much Gladness I hope to get soon.

My thanks to one of the persons who read this review and through his queries alerted me to the fact that - as I discovered later -my Kai Lung collection was not complete.

Rating:
Summary: Fictional tales of ancient China in masterful English.
Review: This is one of the series of Kai Lung stories, written in a delightfully humorous style by Ernest Bramah. These pretend to be translations of an imagined classical Chinese literary style, and follow the fortunes of Kai Lung, a wandering storyteller who is able to recall a tale pertinent to any situation he finds himself in. My edition was published in Hong Kong by Oxford University Press in 1985; others in the series include Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat and Kai Lung Beneath the Mulberry Tree, all equally enjoyable. I never tire of re-reading any of them; regrettably, Bramah's works are out of print and hard to find.

Rating:
Summary: Most Fitting for the Celestial Dragon Throne
Review: This unworthy person, having perused the august Ernest Bramah's "MAX CARRADOS" stories alone (and which should be read and reprinted), found himself faced with a copy of one of the most august of august books. The story unwinds itself delicately, with highly polished language and a good grasp of the Chinese mythology, with a rich vein of subtle humour. My only problem with the book, though, is with the publishers in letting the book go unpublished... BRING BACK KAI LUNG!