Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong, translated by Anna Holmwood.īuckman bought the rights and sold them on to a British publisher after meeting Holmwood and discovering how little of the series was available in English. Cha, who is now 93 and lives in seclusion, created a vast imaginary world over 15 novels, which spawned films, games, comics and television shows. They became the biggest Chinese publishing hit of the last century. The plots were fictional but the historical background was real. A founding editor of the Hong Kong daily newspaper Ming Pao, in the 1950s he put together a set of stories charting the progress of a young martial arts fighter during the Song dynasty and serialised them. A novel in the wuxia, or fighting hero, tradition, it was written under the pen name Jin Yong by Chinese journalist, Louis Cha Leung-yung. Under attack from the Jurchen Jin dynasty, the future of the entire Chinese population rests in the hands of a few lone martial arts exponents. Set in China in 1200, A Hero Born tells of an empire close to collapse. “So, of course, I felt a great weight of responsibility in translating them – and even more as publication draws near.” “These books are read by so many Chinese people when they are teenagers, and the work really stays in their heads,” Holmwood told the Observer. “Jin Yong was in the top 10, though I’d never heard of him nor did I read Chinese,” he said this weekend.Ĭomparisons with Tolkien or George RR Martin might sound overblown, but in China, Hong Kong, Vietnam and Taiwan, Jin Yong’s works are classics, loved like fairytales or national legends. Agent Peter Buckman, who sold the rights to the series to the publisher, came across the works almost by chance as he searched the internet for “bestselling authors”.
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