皇冠体育app

Author Yi Zhongtian compares writing history books with solving complex criminal cases — journeys of observation and discovery. Provided to 皇冠体育app Daily

Retired academic Yi Zhongtian shot to fame with his humorous retelling of the history of the Three Kingdoms. The 66-year-old is embarking on his most ambitious project to date — a series of books detailing thousands of years of Chinese history. Sun Ye and Mei Jia report.

TV celebrity and best-selling author Yi Zhongtian will write a series of books on Chinese history that are already predicted to be publishing sensations.

President of Guomai and , Lu Jinbo, who also publishes such popular authors as Han Han, estimates the books will sell 36 million copies over the next decade and rake in 1.3 billion yuan ($212 million).

Lu says his high hopes for the series is based on the author's popularity.

Yi, 66, is a retiree from the department of Chinese literature at Xiamen University. He became a household name after he appeared in the CCTV program Lecture Room in 2005 and performed a unique, humorous retelling of the history of the Three Kingdoms (AD 220-280). The program was so popular that his book on the topic sold nearly 6 million copies.

His other books sell an average of 700,000 copies.

Yi's new series has the ambitious title Yi Zhongtian's Chinese History. The 36-volume series recounts 3,700 years of Chinese history from the primitive era to the end of the 20th century.

Yi plans to establish a "history of his own style". Yi and his team will release six volumes a year, making the series a standing best-seller.

He released the first two books, Ancestry and State in May.

"I have been anticipating a book like this for 10 years," says Zheng Zhong, president of the series' co-publisher, Zhejiang Literature and Arts Press.

"It's rare for a Chinese title to appeal to readers across age groups," Zheng says.