The Wuxia Fiction of Jin Yong

Jin Yong, sometimes known by his English name Louis Cha, was the most popular and influential "wuxia" or martial arts fantasy author who ever lived. Indeed, he was one of the bestselling author in any language of all time. 

But his books are almost entirely unknown outside of the Chinese-reading world. Part of that is due to the extreme difficulty of translation: although he wrote in the 1950s and '60s, most of his novels have not been translated into English.

A second problem is that, despite the wuxia label, his novels are also generally historical fiction. Typically, a fictional protagonist moves through a specific period in Chinese history interacting with both other fictional characters and real historical figures. Readers unfamiliar with that history are much less likely to understand or enjoy the narrative.

Here we discuss two of his novels in particular: "The Condor Heroes," three out of four volumes of which now have a good, modern English translation; and "The Book and the Sword," Jin Yong's debut novel set in the mid-18th century that just so happens to be about Uyghur Muslims resisting an oppressive central Chinese government in the Empire's northwestern periphery...

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