Records of the Three Kingdoms

The Records of the Three Kingdoms, also known by its Chinese title Sanguozhi (traditional Chinese: 三國志; simplified Chinese: 三国志; pinyin: Sānguó Zhì), is a Chinese historical text which covers the history of the late Eastern Han dynasty (c. 184–220 AD) and the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). It is widely regarded as the official and authoritative historical text for that period. Written by Chen Shou in the third century, the work combines the smaller histories of the rival states of Cao Wei, Shu Han and Eastern Wu in the Three Kingdoms period into a single text. The Records of the Three Kingdoms provided the basis for the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms written by Luo Guanzhong in the 14th century.

Origin and structure

Together with the Records of the Grand Historian, Book of Han and Book of the Later Han, the Records of the Three Kingdoms is part of the early four historiographies of the Twenty-Four Histories canon. It contains 65 volumes and about 360,000 Chinese characters which are broken into three books. The Book of Wei contains 30 volumes, the Book of Shu 15 volumes, while the Book of Wu contains 20 volumes. Each volume is organised in the form of one or more biographies. The amount of space a biography takes up is dictated by the importance of the figure.