The Monkey King is the debut novel of Timothy Mo, originally published in London in 1978 by André Deutsch. It was subsequently released through other UK and US publishers – including Faber & Faber (paperback 1978), HarperCollins (hardcover 1978), Random House/Doubleday hardcover (1980), Vintage (softcover, 1993) – before being self-published by the author under the Paddleless Press imprint in 2000. Comic and ironic in style, the novel was chosen by Hilary Bailey of the New Fiction Society and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1979.