1 h 49 minAudiobook4 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when the hunger for money, rank, or pleasure grows stronger than the call of duty?
In The Sobering Stone, ordinary people, officials, and scholars face choices that set desire against duty. This collection of short stories from the last years of Ming China explores greed, lust, ambition, and pride. Writing under the pen name Donglugukuangsheng, the author brings these struggles into tales meant for a wide audience, where appetite has a price and loyalty faces real tests.
The title offers a sharp image: a stone that wakes the drunk. Here, the drunkenness comes from money, desire, and vanity as much as wine. The stories ask what keeps people faithful when temptation pulls them away. Confucian ideas of loyalty and service stand against selfish wants, while moral retribution gives each choice weight—even when no judge is looking.
What you’ll discover
- A stone that wakes Discover a vivid image that asks readers to wake from greed and vanity.
- The pull of appetite Follow people whose hunger for money, rank, or pleasure bends their good sense.
- Loyalty under pressure Explore the claims of duty and faithful service when personal desire pulls harder.
- Justice beyond the judge Enter a moral world where actions carry consequences, even when justice takes time.
- Everyday choices, clear lessons Meet ordinary people, scholars, and officials through stories that make moral questions concrete.
Who will love it
For readers who love Chinese storytelling, Ming society and the moral habits of everyday life. These tales also welcome anyone who enjoys clear moral lessons about justice, loyalty and the consequences of desire.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A stone meant to wake the drunk
- Desire leads people into ruin
- Loyalty and duty hold society together
- Justice arrives, though not always at once
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- 1 h 49 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
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- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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La Pierre désenivrante
In Ming China, ordinary people, officials and scholars face choices where desire pulls against duty.
Medium levelUnder 2 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Sobering Stone is a collection of vernacular short stories from the last years of Ming China, written under the pen name Donglugukuangsheng. The name suggests a wild and unconventional scholar from the eastern lands of old Lu.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A stone meant to wake the drunk
The title carries the whole method of the book. In the image, people drift through life as if drunk, led by wine, money, desire and vanity. A hard, plain truth is the stone that jolts them awake. The author sets out to be that stone for readers of his day.
This was a common aim in the vernacular fiction of the late Ming period. Storytellers and writers claimed that a tale could teach as well as entertain, and that ordinary readers could learn right conduct from vivid examples. The stories in this collection follow that idea. They present a case, show the choices people make, and let the results speak.
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What is The Sobering Stone about?
It is a collection of Ming-era vernacular stories that show how greed, lust and ambition lead people into trouble, and how loyalty, honesty and duty are tested and rewarded. Each tale carries a plain moral lesson.
What does the title The Sobering Stone mean?
The title pictures people as drunk on desire and delusion. The stone is the hard truth that sobers them. The book aims to wake readers to the consequences of their choices.
Who wrote The Sobering Stone?
It was written under the pen name Donglugukuangsheng, meaning roughly a mad scholar from eastern Lu. The author's true name is not firmly known. The work comes from the late Ming period.
The author
Donglugukuangsheng
Chinese Ming dynasty novelist
Donglugukuangsheng is a pen name, often rendered as the mad scholar of eastern Lu. The writer's real identity is uncertain. The work dates from the late Ming period and belongs to the tradition of vernacular short fiction, alongside the story collections of Feng Menglong and Ling Mengchu.
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