The Book of Wu or Wu shu (Chinese: 吳書) is a lost history of the state of Eastern Wu (229–280). It was compiled by the official historians of the Wu court under orders from the Wu emperors. Portions of the text survive only as quotations preserved in Pei Songzhi's Annotations to the Records of the Three Kingdoms (429).
Emperor Sun Quan (r. 229–252) likely commissioned the work around 250, with Ding Fu and Xiang Jun as compilers. A new committee was formed several years later at the beginning of Sun Liang's reign (r. 252–258) to replace Ding and Xiang, likely due to court factionalism—consisting of Wei Zhao, Zhou Zhao, Xue Ying, Liang Guang, and Hua He. The second committee faced difficulties due to interference, as Zhou Zhao and Liang Guang died within 20 years of the committee's creation and Wei Zhao and Hua He died soon after. The last surviving member of the committee, Xue Ying, lived through the fall of Wu and died in 282. The book was probably not completed, and it was lost sometime after the Tang dynasty (618–907).
The other two of the Three Kingdoms also compiled their own official histories: Cao Wei with the Wei shu and Shu Han with a Shu shu (蜀書). They were all written to follow the pattern of the Dongguan Hanji, which was compiled by several generations of official historians during the Eastern Han.[1]