The History of the Three Kingdoms You’ll Stay Up All Night to Finish

There were two great dynasties in ancient Chinese history: the Han and the Tang. Yet after each era of good government came a period of chaos: the turmoil of the Three Kingdoms at the end of the Han, and the upheaval of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms at the end of the Tang. But compared with the chaos at the end of the Tang, the late Han and Three Kingdoms period was more sophisticated, more layered, more captivating, and even more artful in its disorder. Many even believe that the chaos of the Sixteen Kingdoms of the Five Barbarians at the end of the Jin, which was even worse than these two periods, was simply a continuation of the Three Kingdoms era. However, people’s understanding of the Three Kingdoms is largely shaped by the romanticized novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which contains plenty of fabrication and error. This book focuses on restoring the novel’s events against the historical record, striving to portray an authentic history of the Three Kingdoms.