Die Märchen der Weltliteratur
mit Ill.

These fairly tales don't have a lot of plot, so I found them pretty boring. ( )

This has been so far one of the most disappointing books I read in 2014.
I usually really like traditional Chinese fairy tales and short stories, but I have yet to get to know a book that has been so carelessly translated like this one. It has probably been translated directly from Cantonese to English, hence the non-use of the default name translation. I would like to say that the translation problems are not so bad, but when it affect the storytelling, I consider it a big issue. Depending on the book, if the names and locations haven't been properly translated, the meaning of the story itself will be damaged, and this happened in pretty much every single tale in this book. Several passages don't really make sense and the bad translation got to the point that the name of the characters was turned into an adjective. At a certain point of the book, I'm not even sure I was paying attention to what was going on anymore. The Chinese Fairy Book lacked a serious reviewing.
Not only that, the selection of tales was also rather appalling. I do know that the Chinese culture is quite rich of fairy tales and magical stories, yet the authors chose to put an excerpt of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms that really feels like a random piece of the book without any context. The last tale of the book is a giant excerpt of Journey to the West, which I strongly dislike for being repetitive and in this book there was pretty much a summary of everything that happened in the first book. It felt like reliving a nightmare.

There are tons of excellent Chinese fairy tale books around the globe, but this one is definitely not one of them. ( )