Regina S. Llamas brings a lifetime of research and a flair for literary nuance to the translation of Top Graduate Zhang Xie to let the reader experience why this play made for great theater. Her rendition beautifully captures the riotous fun of the original, and her introduction is a tour de force in its own right. -- Patricia Sieber, author of Theaters of Desire: Authors, Readers, and the Reproduction of Early Chinese Song-Drama, 1300-2000 The manuscript copy of Zhang Xie zhuangyuan is our only surviving complete example of a full-length southern play preceding the fifteenth century. It is a marvelous comedy, parodying all the conventions it employs. This sparkling translation by Llamas includes an extensive introduction that provides a detailed and critical discussion of the play and its genre. -- Wilt L. Idema, author of The Resurrected Skeleton: From Zhuangzi to Lu Xun Having a complete English translation of Top Graduate Zhang Xie gives students and comparatists a far more comprehensive view of this performance form than ever before. Llamass introduction and notes authoritatively situate the play historically, culturally, and in terms of textual creation and transmission. This is an excellent addition to the Translations from the Asian Classics series. -- Robert E. Hegel, cotranslator of A Couple of Soles: A Comic Play from Seventeenth-Century China Top Graduate Zhang Xie leaves the audience in stitches (or, as the Chinese would rather say, unstitched), while experts cherish it as a key to early Chinese theater lost in oblivion. Llamas brings these two worlds together with her vivid translation and erudite scholarship on the centennial of the plays rediscovery. -- Ling Hon Lam, author of The Spatiality of Emotion in Early Modern China: From Dreamscapes to Theatricality Regina S. Llamas' translation reads well, and Top Graduate Zhang Xie is a consistently entertaining play . . . This edition with its lengthy, thorough Introduction is a fine introduction to Chinese drama for those new to it. * Complete Review *
