Patrick Hanan, New York Times Book Review
"A martial epic with an astonishing fidelity to history, which has been translated now into lively English by Moss Roberts. . . . The subject matter of Three Kingdoms has long held an extraordinary grip on the Chinese imagination. . . . The great achievement of the author . . . was to match historiography with fiction and gain a synergistic effect from the combination of elite and popular tradition."
Three Kingdoms FROM THE PUBLISHER
Three Kingdoms tells the story of the fateful last reign of the Han dynasty (206 b.c.-a.d. 220), when the Chinese empire was divided into three warring kingdoms. This decisive period in Chinese history became a subject of intense and continuing interest to historians, poets, and dramatists. Writing some 1,200 later, the Ming author Luo Guanzhong drew on this rich literary heritage to fashion a sophisticated, compelling narrative that has become the Chinese national epic. Luo's novel offers a startling and unsparing view of how power is wielded, how diplomacy is conducted, and how wars are planned and fought; it has influenced the ways the Chinese think about power, diplomacy, and war even to this day. As important for Chinese culture as the Homeric epics have been for the West, this Ming dynasty masterpiece continues to be widely influential in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and remains a great work of world literature. The University of California Press is pleased to make the complete and unabridged translation available again.
SYNOPSIS
The complete and unabridged edition available again in a two-part edition.
FROM THE CRITICS
National Post
By the measure of sheer density of history and drama, all other historical novels suffer by comparison to Three Kingdoms, the great epic of the Chinese literary tradition. Roberts' rendition of the prose is lively and readable, but his translation of the poetry is a delight, capturing the flavour and pace, and sometimes even the rhyme, of the original.
Art & Photography
Book Info
