The Cloud Dream of the Nine

The Cloud Dream of the Nine, known in Korean as Guunmong, is a seventeenth century Korean novel widely attributed to the scholar and official Kim Man-jung, though some doubt remains because Korean scholars of his rank rarely acknowledged authorship of vernacular fiction. Originally written in Classical Chinese, with versions in Hangul circulating by the eighteenth century, it is set during China's Tang dynasty and follows a young monk whose elaborate dream of worldly ambition, wealth and love ultimately teaches him the Buddhist lesson of the impermanence of earthly attachment, woven through with Confucian and Taoist ideas as well. It became the first Korean literary work translated into English, rendered by James Scarth Gale in 1922, and it remains regarded as one of the most beloved classics of Korean literature.