Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Annotated Edition)

Author: Luo Guanzhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Romance of the Three Kingdoms (also known as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Popular Romance of the Three Kingdoms), is a renowned and outstanding long, chaptered historical novel 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 diverse, offering readers profound and multifaceted value. 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, a folk legend. It describes major historical events that occurred in the late Eastern Han Dynasty and the Three Kingdoms period over nearly a century, as well as numerous heroic figures who made a name for themselves. 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. Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written by Luo Guanzhong, a figure from the late Yuan Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty. Before its completion, the "Three Kingdoms stories" had already undergone hundreds of years of historical development. During the Tang Dynasty, the Three Kingdoms stories were widely circulated, even familiar to children. With the development of urban literature, the "storytellers" () of the Song Dynasty had already specialized in telling Three Kingdoms stories, which were then called "telling the Three Kingdoms" (). The Three Kingdoms Zhi Pinghua that emerged in the Yuan Dynasty was essentially a manuscript used by storytellers. Although it was relatively brief and rough, it already took the initial shape of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Based on folk legends and the creations 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 (including materials from Selected Anecdotes from the World and its annotations), and through immense creative effort, wrote the grand masterpiece—Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This book is based on the Mao Zonggang edition of the annotated version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, with reference to 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 remain as they were in the original.