The Book of Song (simplified Chinese: 宋书; traditional Chinese: 宋書; pinyin: Sòng Shū), also called "The History of the Song," is a historical text of the Liu Song Dynasty of the Southern Dynasties of China. It covers history from 420 to 479, and is one of the Twenty-Four Histories, a traditional collection of historical records. It was authored by Shen Yue from the Liang Dynasty (502-557) and contained 100 volumes at the time that it was written. By the time of the Song Dynasty, some volumes were already missing. Later editors reconstructed those volumes by taking material from the History of the Southern Dynasties, plus a few works such as the Historiette of Gao by Gao Jun, though many of those volumes were no longer in their original condition. Modern historians believe that there are serious problems with the text; one of them being that the book is often very unclear and is biased against the surrounding ethnic groups, including the ruling elites of Northern Wei.
Famous quotes containing the words book and/or song:
“I review novels to make money, because it is easier for a sluggard to write an article a fortnight than a book a year, because the writer is soothed by the opiate of action, the crank by posing as a good journalist, and having an airhole. I dislike it. I do it and I am always resolving to give it up.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)
“Water. Its sunny track in the plain; its splashing in the garden canal, the sound it makes when in its course it meets the mane of the grass; the diluted reflection of the sky together with the fleeting sight of the reeds; the Negresses fill their dripping gourds and their red clay containers; the song of the washerwomen; the gorged fields the tall crops ripening.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)