Wallet of Kai Lung

In ancient China, Kai Lung walks from village to village with nothing but his robes, his voice, and a wallet that holds more than coin. He is a storyteller, and his tales stretch from the comic to the cosmic, each one delivered with a theatrical flourish that bends reality as surely as any magic. This 1900 collection introduced one of fantasy's most peculiar narrators: a teller of lies so elegant they become indistinguishable from truth. The stories gathered here inhabit a China that never quite existed, a land of mandarin corruption, supernatural retribution, and improbable romance, rendered in prose that winks at the orientalist sensibilities of Victorian England while clearly revelling in its own artifice. Kai Lung's voice is the real magic here, a narrator so self-aware of his own mendacity that his disclaimers become promises, his digressions the real story. Two tales from this collection found later life in the celebrated Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, cementing its place as a quiet cornerstone of the fantasy tradition. For readers who enjoy being in on the joke, who love stories told with theatrical self-awareness, or who simply want to hear a master liar insist upon his own honesty, Wallet of Kai Lung offers pleasures both sly and sincere.