Chuang Tzu The Inner Chapters

Revered for millennia in the Chinese spiritual tradition of the Tao Te Ching, this poetic translation of an ancient Taoist text comes alive for the modern reader

Witty, engaging and spiced with the lyricism of poetry, Chuang Tzu's Taoist insights in the Inner Chapters are timely and eternal. The only sustained section of text widely believed to be the work of Chuang Tzu himself, these chapters date to the 4th century B.C.E and are profoundly concerned with spiritual ecology.

With bold and startling prose, David Hinton's vital translation is surprisingly modern, making this ancient text from the golden age of Chinese philosophy come alive for contemporary readers. The Inner Chapters' fantastical passages offer up a wild menagerie of characters, freewheeling play with language, and surreal humor. Interwoven with Chuang Tzu's sharp instruction on the Tao are short stories that are often rough and ribald, rich with satire and paradox.

David Hinton has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, numerous fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and both of the major awards given for poetry translation in the United States: the Landon Translation Award, and the PEN Translation Award. His recent book of essays, Hunger Mountain: A Field Guide to Mind and Landscape, was on the Best-Books-of-the-Year list at The Guardian in England.