Review | Louis Cha ‘Jin Yong’ novel Legends of the Condor Heroes Book Two is out in English, and it’s thrilling
- ‘Jin Yong’ has entranced generations of Asian readers, and with this latest release Western audiences can discover why he was so revered in Asia
- His novel takes up the story of Guo Jing, 13th century kung fu fighting hero, his equally adept lover, Lotus and their never-ending battles
A Bond Undone: Legends of the Condor Heroes Book Two
by Jin Yong (translated by Gigi Chang),
MacLehose Press
The death in Hong Kong last year of Louis Cha Leung-yung – known to his readers as Jin Yong – ended one of the great literary careers of modern times. Too popular, perhaps, to be seriously considered for a Nobel prize (despite former Chinese president Jiang Zemin sending ambassadors to plead the author’s case), Jin Yong’s wuxia novels sold by the hundreds of millions, and spawned an entertainment industry all of their own – generating sequels, spin-offs, movies, video games and graphic novels.
Jin Yong’s status outside Asia, however, is less stellar. Obituaries in the Western media outlets that covered his death seemed required to refer to him as “China’s J.R.R. Tolkien”. While this short cut gave a sense of Jin Yong’s vast sales and epic stories, it was also necessary to explain a writer who was little known in anglophone literary circles.
His novels can routinely be read in Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese, but there is a dearth of English-language editions: before 2018, only The Book and the Sword (1955) and The Deer and the Cauldron (1969) had been released, and that was almost two decades ago.
