"Essential."
(Choice) "Sima Qian's famous Letter to Ren An. . . has often been seen as a key to understanding the historian's frame of mind as he labored to complete his monumental Shiji. Questions linger, however, about its provenance, dating, and reliability. . . . This compact volume offers a timely engagement with these and other issues. . . . The polished, richly annotated translation, a collective effort involving all four authors, testifies to the collegial spirit with which this inquiry was conducted."
(China Review International: A Journal of Reviews of Scholarly Literature in Chinese Studies) "Questioning the received understanding of the Letter's nature, authorship, and its relation with the Shiji, this volume, based on solid scholarship and scrupulously referenced, will become a must-read for anyone interested in the study of Sima Qian and the Shiji. It also serves as a most welcome reminder of the necessity to periodically re-evaluate well-established perceptions of literary traditions with a critical eye."
- Yangruxin Liu (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies)
