Dream of the Red Chamber

A Tale of Betrayal

By: Cao Xueqin

Narrated by: Cyril Taylor-Carr, The Cliff

The Dream of the Red Chamber (also known as The Story of the Stone) is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of China, and considered the greatest of them all. Almost 40 main characters and some 500 minor characters tell the fortunes of the Chia family; the book details mainly the life of Chia Pao-yü, the heir apparent, who is described as very intelligent, but also as carefree and self-indulging. The already wealthy Chia family rises to new heights when Pao-yü's elder sister becomes an imperial consort. On her first visit home, a lush garden is built, where much of the rest of the story takes place. The intrigues surrounding Pao-yü and his cousins, especially Lin Tai-yü who he loves, and Hsüeh Pao-ch'ai who he is finally tricked into marrying, make up a large part of the story. The decline of the Chia family begins with the death of the imperial consort, and when they fall into disfavour with the emperor, their mansions and the garden are eventually destroyed.

The whole book has 120 chapters, only 80 of which were written by Cao Xueqin before his death in 1764. Cheng Weiyuan and Gao E claimed to have access to Cao's papers, and published what is now known as the Cheng-Gao version in 1791. Henry Bencraft Joly translated only part of the book written by Cao. Book I contains the first 24 chapters, Book II ends abruptly with chapter 56; a Book III was never published.

Public Domain (P)2022 Icon Audio Arts

Terrible narration

terrible narration, constantly switching narrators where most of them can't read the Chinese names correctly

Terrible audio quality!

Several of the narrators sounded like they were in echo chambers, two others were chewing gum during their entire chapters.

No more than half the book

The story just breaks off in the middle, even though the last narrator says, "End of Dream of the Red Chamber." I tried looking on Amazon's website, but I could not even find this audiobook listed, to say nothing of a volume 2 or some such. Very strange!

A very difficult listen

This story is a classic and is valuable to listen to for that reason. However the performance is not consistent from chapter to chapter. Portions are very much like a dry read. Other portions sound like they were read in a closed closet.

I know the story is hard to perform but I would suggest that white noise or background music could make it easier for the reader to catch up and follow the story well. The group which was credited with narrating has done this for other books and it worked well.

I give great credit to the narrators for proper Chinese pronunciation.

Listeners should be aware of the story before listening. The book is an excellent story but it is complex and requires commitment.

Narration needs improvement. Frustrating.

The narrator is difficult to understand. Words are spoken correctly, but the flow of the voice makes it difficult to understand. I had to constantly rewind to figure out what was going on. This story is supposed to be good, but I will be spending an unreal amount of time with the rewind. I could learn Chinese faster than this.