The Wallet of Kai Lung

What It's About

A collection of interlinked fantasy tales set in an imagined version of ancient China, framed by the adventures of Kai Lung, an itinerant storyteller who recounts his stories to a variety of listeners and captors he meets on his travels. The tales themselves cover transformation, probation, vengeance, and unlikely turns of fortune among mandarins, artists, and everyday townspeople, each shaped by Bramah's taste for elaborate courtesy and moral irony. The final tale departs from this pattern, presented instead as a manuscript left behind by its own narrator.

Key Concepts

The book is best known for its distinctive style: an elevated, deliberately formal English meant to evoke the flavour of Chinese storytelling, full of florid compliments, proverbs, and circuitous courtesies used for comic and satirical effect. Its structure as a storyteller relating stories-within-a-story was influential on later fantasy writing. Worth noting is that Bramah's "China" is entirely invented — he never visited the country, and the setting is better read as an imaginative pastiche than any attempt at authentic representation.

About the Author

Ernest Bramah was the pen name of Ernest Brammah Smith, an English writer born in 1868 near Manchester. He was famously private, giving almost no interviews or public details about his life. Before turning to fiction he worked briefly as a farmer, then in journalism, including a spell as secretary to fellow writer Jerome K. Jerome. He died in 1942.