The Nine-tailed Turtle

The Nine-tailed Turtle (Chinese: 九尾龜, also translated as Nine-tailed Turtles, Nine-headed Turtle, or Nine-times Cuckold) is a novel by Zhang Chunfan (?-1935), an author from Piling (near modern-day Changzhou). The novel centres around the life of a scholar named Zhang Qiugu, who leaves his wife to spend time with famous courtesans in China's pleasure districts.

The book was serialized from 1906 to 1910 and has 192 chapters, making it one of the longest novels produced in China's late Qing and early Republican eras. During that time, it was "phenomenally popular", and was one of the most widely read books of the 1920s, as well as one of the most popular novels of its time written partly in Wu Chinese. In the 20th century, many intellectuals criticised it for its erotic content, and during the intervening years it "fell into oblivion", with the result that by the 1980s it was difficult to obtain even a Chinese copy of the novel. However, by the 21st century it had a continued high circulation with new editions and print runs.