The Jade Pavilion, Anonymous, Pierre Kaser, Alois Tatu

A falsely naturalistic comedy and erotic fantasy, The Jade Pavilion could date from the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
Its author, still unknown, achieves the remarkable feat of bringing together a whole range of comical situations and colourful characters: a man has his sex altered to satisfy his wife's expectations, a cuckolder loses his life because of his taste for dalliance, a loving vixen escapes death to return and take revenge on her ungrateful lover, an old merchant exhausts himself trying to satisfy his young wife with her overly pronounced sensuality, not to mention a host of zealous maidservants and a particularly proficient master of sexual matters.
Pleasantly disturbing, this novel, in which scholars lose their haughtiness, orchestrates a reversal of values that alone deserved its revival.