Sunzi - The Art of War - Nuinui

The Art of War, attributed to Sunzi, is the world's first known treatise on strategy. It has also exerted a powerful fascination on many important political and military leaders, in China and elsewhere. Its recent notoriety in the West, commensurate with its centuries-long oblivion, is due to the many possibilities for application in the strategic and military, as well as economic and commercial, spheres of this text. It was first translated into a Western language by the French Jesuit Amiot in 1772, but the first annotated translation from classical Chinese was not published in English until 1910 by Lionel Giles. Thanks to his incredible ability to penetrate the innermost folds of meaning in the text, the work a milestone in sinological studies and this illustrated edition is based on it, with 24 color pages, full Chinese text and a wealth of notes and commentary. In its 13 chapters, a complete picture of the theory of war as well as peace comes together.

Reasons for interest:

The oldest treatise on military strategy, divided into 13 chapters

A timely analysis of the many dimensions of war

A useful tool for understanding and dealing with power struggles and other conflict situations in any field

Chinese text and 24 richly illustrated color pages

Thanks to the evocative power of images, the reader's mind is guided to discover this extraordinary masterpiece of Chinese culture

A text accompanied by a very rich apparatus of notes and commentary

Format: 15.0 x 21.1 cm

Carton with dust jacket

360 pages

LIONEL GILES (1875-1958) was a highly regarded English sinologist and orientalist. Secretary of the China Society beginning in 1911, he worked for much of his career at the British Museum, first as deputy curator and later as curator of the Oriental Manuscripts and Books Department, collaborating with the most distinguished scholars of the time. A humanist and a great scholar, he is credited with some of the most successful translations of classics of Chinese philosophy for the general public and a large number of articles, reviews, and bibliographical studies published in specialist journals. In 1951 King George VI appointed him Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in recognition of his services to the field of sinology.

ENRICO LAVAGNO is the author of numerous volumes on historical, artistic and geographical subjects published by Italian and foreign publishers. He was co-author of the texts for the volumes The Holy Bible (2003) and Wonders of Architecture (2008), and author of The World (2005), Italy Traces of the Past (2007), The Holy Land in the Lithographs of David Roberts (2008) and Our Lady of Grace: Faith, Art and Tradition (2010).