And nobody mentioned Classical Chinese Literature? For SHAME!
*Romance of the Three Kingdoms, set in the Three Kingdoms period. Historical accuracy often gets sacrificed for the sake of drama, but the author does it so well you tend to forgive the fudges. The rounds of “I know this about X, but does he know I know?” between the strategists are especially fun. (I’m pretty sure the English versions are annotated with “what really happened”, but I haven’t read them.)
*Journey To the West, which is more Historical Fantasy set very loosely in the Tang dynasty, and more of a Hero’s Quest thing, but still great to read. Personally I find the first part, where Monkey fights all of the Celestial Bureaucracy for his own bit of sky, is more interesting than “Monkey rescues Monk from the monsters trying to eat him”, but your mileage may vary.
*Heroes of the Water Margin (or Suikoden for you Japanophiles), set in the Song dynasty. The ending is depressing as hell, but the rest of the stories are a good read. Somehow the author manages to bring One Hundred and Eight heroes (and supporting cast) to life. The moral dissonance of male chauvinism might put some people off, though.
*Dream of the Red Chamber, set vaguely in the Ming (and/or early Qing) dynasty. I haven’t read this one myself, but I’ve heard it’s pretty massively depressing, too.
*Feng Shen Yan Yi, historical fantasy set at the end of the Yin/beginning of Zhou dynasty. Lots of magic gets tossed around, and personally from the bits I read I find it a lot weaker than Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but it’s still alright.
I came in to suggest those. Van Gulik was a diplomat, though, not a professional historian. His Judge Dee novels are mysteries featuring Djien-Djieh Dee, a T’ang- era ,magistrate who really existed. They’re excellent. Van Gulik also translated the Dee Goong An, published by Dover books, which is an 18th century novel about Judge Dee.
Since van Gulik’s death, at least two other people have written novels about him, retaining him as a solver of mysteries. See here:
But on the other hand, many people dont know that a Dee Goong An novel was turned into a movie in the early 70s … Judge Dee and the Monastary Murders …
You hit all of my recommendations but I can’t emphasize Romance of the Three Kingdoms enough. It’s like Herodotus for 200 A.D. China: the facts are there tied up with legends of what people thought about them.
Except that – presumably to give himself more freedom of action in plotting and characterization – Clavell changes all the names: Tokugawa becomes Toranaga, William Adams becomes John Blackthorne, etc.
That would be the Once Upon a Time in China series, with Li as Wong Fei Hung (most of the time), but that’s not really ancient, just late 19th century.
Edit to add, find the move Mongol if you can.
