Xiaoshan Yang: Wang Anshi and Song Poetic Culture. (Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series 129.) 360 pp. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2021. £56.95. ISBN 978 0 67426290 4.

former depicts the emperor’s birth and accession to the throne (despite not being the king’s biological son) and his later power struggles with his half-brother and mother, while the latter spotlights Jing Ke’s failed attempt to assassinate the emperor. In translating Kingdoms in Peril, Milburn primarily eschews literal translation in favour of a free style that, besides keeping the text’s flow fluent and natural, works well for this novel: Feng’s novel is full of allusions and references to characters and plots in other (usually untranslated) chapters that, were the translation literal, would require footnotes. Because the original novel contains multiple narrative threads and the translated storylines are taken from multiple chapters, the translator sometimes summarizes the original text’s transitions between narratives, a method that echoes Feng’s own invention of characters and plots to fill gaps in his historical sources. The translation also offers glimpses of the novel’s original form by quoting poems, including Feng’s explanations of difficult terms, and using couplets for many of the chapter titles that are imitations, if not translations, of the original. Though the translation is generally of very high quality, it contains several small errors. For instance, in one poem (p. 72), fendai (粉黛) is translated as the colours of “the beacon fires”, though it should refer to Queen Bao, the femme fatale of the dynasty: literally face powder and eyebrow pigment, fendai is used as a metonymy for imperial consorts in many poems. Another example is the title guojiu (國舅, “brother-in-law” of a lord or a king), which is translated as “Leader of the Nation” (p. 137). Some romanization of names is also confusing – the table of contents lists “Ai Lao” (p. vii) despite his appearance as “Lao Ai” in the story (p. 303) – and there are several mistakes in the romanization of characters’ names, such as Zhao “Xi” rather than “Su” (p. 120). It is also regrettable that Milburn does not address how Feng reconciles inconsistencies among his sources or her reasons for selecting these nine stories from the text’s forty or fifty. None of this, however, keeps Kingdoms in Peril from being a fluent, pleasant translation equipped with a helpful introduction. For readers who enjoy fascinating historical novels and researchers interested in Feng Menglong or late imperial Chinese literature generally, Kingdoms in Peril is a must-have.