Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Annotated Edition · Volume 1 and 2)

Author: Luo Guanzhong (Ming)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-01-01
Features: Heroes reveal their talents today, testing their swords and skills, showing their power from the start, and marking their names with the Three Kingdoms. Features of this book: Newly revised annotated edition, eliminating the negative impact of variant characters on readers. Over 600 annotations to enhance readers' knowledge of history and literature. Nearly 100 portraits of characters, 60 color illustrations, helping you savor the story of the Three Kingdoms. Over 1,200 vivid illustrations accompanying the text, making reading the original Romance of the Three Kingdoms an exciting experience. Romance of the Three Kingdoms, also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms in Plain Language, is a classic Chinese chaptered historical novel and a monumental work that has profoundly influenced the spirit and character of the Chinese nation. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was compiled by Luo Guanzhong. Little is known about his life. We only know that he lived during the late Yuan and early Ming dynasties, with ancestral roots in Dongyuan (modern-day Dongping, Shandong), and later settled in Hangzhou. It is said that he was a man with political ambitions, aspiring to "chart a course for the establishment of a kingdom," and he participated in the peasant uprisings of the late Yuan dynasty, serving as a counselor to Zhang Shicheng. If these accounts are credible, then his ability to write such a masterpiece as Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which reflects political and military struggles, was not accidental. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was compiled by Luo Guanzhong based on "official histories, fiction, textual evidence, and cultural preferences" (as recorded in Bai Chuan Shu Zhi by the Ming scholar Gao Ru). He primarily relied on official histories, drawing rich historical material from Chen Shou's Records of the Three Kingdoms, Pei Songzhi's annotations to Records of the Three Kingdoms, Fan Ye's History of the Later Han, and others. He also roughly referenced Sima Guang's Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government to trace the historical context of the Three Kingdoms' rise, development, and transformation. Additionally, he drew inspiration from Zhu Xi's Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government and its "sectionalized" narrative format, creatively adopting a chaptered, segmented, and titled "chapter" style to narrate historical stories. As a result, the entire work appears authentic, well-structured, clear, and easy to understand.