Strange tales from a Chinese studio

The original work, known as Liaozhai Zhiyi, contains nearly five hundred individual tales, whereas most English editions are curated selections that include only a fraction of the total manuscripts.

Pu Songling was a scholar who spent decades failing the imperial civil service examinations, and many of his tales use supernatural narratives to satirize the corruption and social injustices he observed within the bureaucracy of his time.

Translations vary greatly in content because earlier versions, such as the one by Herbert Giles, often omitted or sanitized passages involving sexuality, blood, or the human body to align with the social sensibilities of the Victorian era.