Outlaws of the Marsh

Water Margin (Shuihu zhuan) is one of the earliest Chinese novels written in vernacular Mandarin, and is attributed to Shi Nai'an. It is also translated as Outlaws of the Marsh and All Men Are Brothers.The story, which is set in the Northern Song dynasty (around 1120), tells of how a group of 108 outlaws gather at Mount Liang (or Liangshan Marsh) to rebel against the government. Later they are granted amnesty and enlisted by the government to resist the nomadic conquest of the Liao dynasty and other rebels. While the book's authorship is traditionally attributed to Shi Nai'an (1296–1372), the first external reference to the novel only appeared in 1524 during the Jiajing reign of the Ming dynasty, sparking a long-lasting academic debate on when it was actually written and which historical events the author had witnessed that inspired him to write the book.It is considered one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature. It has introduced readers to many of the best-known characters in Chinese literature, such as Wu Song, Lin Chong, Pan Jinlian, Song Jiang and Lu Zhishen. Water Margin also exerted a towering influence in the development of fiction elsewhere in East Asia, such as in Japanese literature.