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Review: Zhuangzi — The Complete Writings — the whole book, annotated
★★★★★4.6 / 5.0 (editorial rating)
Verdict: the edition to sit with. Eleven years after his Essential Writings, Brook Ziporyn returned and translated the entire Zhuangzi, this time with full annotation, a long and searching introduction, and a glossary of the essential terms. It is the scholar's counterpart to Watson: where Watson gives you a clean line to read, Ziporyn gives you the line and the argument beneath it. Denser and slower — and, for close reading, superb.
- Title
- Zhuangzi: The Complete Writings
- Author
- Zhuangzi, tr. Brook Ziporyn
- Publisher
- Hackett Publishing, 2020 (original: 4th–3rd century BC)
- Length
- Complete translation, annotated · ~720 pp.
- Difficulty
- Advanced ★★★ — rewarding, but a long climb
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What it is — in three lines
This is Ziporyn's second, complete Zhuangzi — the successor to the selection that is our #1. It contains all thirty-three chapters, each carefully annotated, framed by a substantial introduction and a glossary that unpacks the recurring Chinese terms rather than pretending they map neatly onto English. Where the earlier book gave newcomers the core with a light touch, this one gives serious readers the whole text with the scholarship attached.
The core — translation as interpretation
Ziporyn's guiding conviction is that Zhuangzi's key words — the ones usually flattened into "the Way," "virtue," "Heaven" — carry a play of meanings that a good translation has to keep in motion. So he renders them with care and then explains, in the notes and glossary, what is at stake. The effect is that you watch the equality of things and the collapse of fixed "right and wrong" being built out of the very grammar of the sentences.
Call something "this" and something else "that," and you have already taken a stand from somewhere; step around to the other side and this and that change places — so the sage does not get stuck on either.
— the argument of "The Equality of Things" (editorial paraphrase, not Ziporyn's wording)
For a reader who has already met the book in Watson and wants to know why a passage means what it means, this is the payoff.
Three highlights
1. The whole text, fully annotated
All thirty-three chapters with notes — the complete Zhuangzi with a guide at your elbow for the hard turns.
2. The glossary of essential terms
The section on the key words is worth the price on its own; it is a short course in why Zhuangzi resists easy paraphrase.
3. A single, considered voice
Because one philosopher-translator made both the selection and the complete edition, they fit together: start with #1, graduate to this, and you are in continuous company.
What to watch out for
The honest caution is length and density. At around seven hundred pages with heavy annotation, this is not a first Zhuangzi — arrive here after a selection and a readable complete translation, or the apparatus will bury the pleasure. It is also, unavoidably, an interpretation: Ziporyn's readings of the key terms are strong and particular, and another scholar (Graham, say) would divide the sentences differently. That is a feature for a close reader and a hazard for a beginner. Use it as the edition you think with, alongside Watson, not the one you meet the book through.
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