Romance of the Three Kingdoms - (Annotated Edition)

Author: Luo Guanzhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Romance of the Three Kingdoms is also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It is one of the most famous and outstanding long, chaptered historical novels in the history of Chinese fiction. Romance of the Three Kingdoms is an excellent historical novel created based on the historical facts and folk legends of the Three Kingdoms period. Its content is rich and varied, offering readers profound and diverse insights. The story begins with Liu, Guan, and Zhang forming a brotherhood in the peach garden during the reign of Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty, according to folk legend. It describes major historical events that occurred during the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period over nearly a century, as well as numerous heroic figures who left a mark on history. Through vivid and moving stories, the author reveals the darkness and corruption within the feudal ruling class, condemning the cruelty and vileness of the rulers.
The author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms was Luo Guanzhong, a figure from the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Before the novel was completed, the "Three Kingdoms stories" had already undergone centuries of historical development. During the Tang Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms stories were widely circulated and even children were familiar with them. With the development of urban literature, the "storytellers" () of the Song Dynasty had already specialized in telling the Three Kingdoms stories, which were then called "Speaking of the Three Kingdoms." The Romance of the Three Kingdoms from the Yuan Dynasty was essentially a manuscript used by storytellers. Although it was relatively brief and rough, it already had the initial scale of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Based on folk legends and the creative works of folk artists, Luo Guanzhong also referred to the materials cited in Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms and Pei Songzhi's annotations (which also included materials from The New Tales of the World and its annotations), and through immense creative effort, he wrote the grand masterpiece—Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
This book is based on the Mao Zonggang edition of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms with annotations by Mao Zonggang, and it has been cross-referenced with other printed editions such as those from the People's Literature Publishing House and Yue Lu Publishing House. Except for the conversion of traditional characters and variant characters to simplified characters, homophones, archaic characters, and other forms are retained as they appeared in the original text.