Three Kingdoms: Part Two: A Historical Novel: v. 2
EUR 13,62
A great book - A wonderful but not always easy to read book.Every person in the book has a name, a style (probably zi) and maybe even more names and one can easily become confused by the amount of names. I have one complaint about the book:It is heavily annotated (which is good). Nearly every sentence in the first few chapters has a small number next to it. But the downside is: The explanations are at the end of book 2! I ve bought part 1 first and wanted to order part 2 when I had nearly finished part 1 but then I searched the annotations and only found them after I had part 2. Then I already couldn t know where all the annotations belonged to and I also didn t want to reread part one only to get the advantage of the annotations. If you order part1, be sure to order part2 at the same time because you ll lack the deeper knowledge. You ll have to carry around two books but it is worth it.
Three Kingdoms: A Historical Novel: No. 1-4. / Moss Roberts - I came across Three Kingdoms during the Shanghai Book Fair 2007. It is a long story about China s Three Kingdoms period in the 3rd century AD. The story covers the collapse of the Han Dynasty and the revolt of the Yellow Scarves. There are some useful illustrations in the edition of the Foreign Languages Press Beijing edition. Such a big story gives also useful additional information like the different meanings of the used imperial colours. From the 595 pages of volume one more than 60 cover notes. Every single name is carfully exlained. Practicaly I like the English Moss Roberts edition very much. The picturesque language is also very awesome, e.g. Gao Zu, founder of the Han, won the empire because he knew how to invite surender and how to recieve it. (vol. I, p. 23)Journey to the West is another Chinese classic. Comparing with Three Kingdoms I prefer the later one. Playing in the Tang dynastie it is a very colourful description of a journey to the West to fetch some Buddha scriptures by monkey (Sun Wukong) and the Tang priest Sanzang. I enjoyed volume one very much and hope to find time for reading part two and three. (5 points). 6th May 2008
Wonderful - I could nt put this one down. It is an action packed epic. I was actually sorry that I did nt get the unabridged version because I wanted to continue reading even after I was finished. The characters are well developed and the plots are interwoven to make everything flow together in a very exciting way. Try it!
Greatest book ever written. - I am 18 years old, and i have read this book numerous time in Chinese and in Vietnamese. It fill with battle of wits, and will, intertwine with historical events and figures, if i have one book to reccommend, this would be the one. The English version of this book have left out some important ideas and events, also have numberous error in translation, if u can read chinese, then you should try to get it in Chinese. Buy it.
Good summary of story - The translated version of the classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Well translated, but Roberts cuts out some key interesting points that are integral in the story. For intstance he forgets to leave in Cao Cao s speech before his death, Zhuge Liang s seven battles with the barbarian leader as the Han Shu prime minister, etc.. It is akin to writing Moses story, yet leaving out the fact that he parted the sea or that he spoke to Ramses.