The Book of Swindles: Selections from a Late Ming Collection

The Book of Swindles, a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception. Ostensibly a manual for self-protection, it presents a tableau of criminal ingenuity in late-Ming China, featuring an array of smooth operators, crooks, and charlatans, from unscrupulous merchants and corrupt officials to covetous monks and venal eunuchs. Each story comes with commentary by the author, Zhang Yingyu, who expounds a moral lesson while also speaking as a connoisseur of the swindle. This volume contains annotated translations of just over half of the eighty-odd tales in Zhang's landmark work.

The Book of Swindles, a seventeenth-century story collection, offers a panoramic guide to the art of deception. Ostensibly a manual for self-protection, it presents a tableau of criminal ingenuity in late Ming China. Each story comes with commentary by the author, who expounds a moral lesson while also speaking as a connoisseur of the swindle.