As I read Anna Holmwood’s vibrant translation – gripped by the unashamed narrative zest and primary-coloured fairytale world – I felt a slight regret that I was coming to this novel in my fifth decade. It seems incredible that this is the first book in the Legends of the Condor Heroes series to come out in English, but better late than never. Fortified by this tradition and written with unselfconscious energy, A Hero Born channels mythic archetypes that resonate across cultures: the struggle between good and evil, a kingdom under threat from an encroaching tyranny, and the coming to consciousness of a young hero whose destiny is to try to make a better world. Writing his books, he has drawn both on Chinese history and also on the examples of less celebrated writers, such as the novelist and martial artist Xiang Kairan, whose work inspired the lost 27-hour 1928 kung fu film, The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple. Jin Yong is not the first wuxia writer: its roots go back centuries. His explanation reminded me of the 10,000 hours of practice that, according to Malcolm Gladwell, are the basis for expertise at anything. “Just as in the study of music or chess, demanding fast results can choke initial promise,” the author warns us. It seems you can have kung fu at making puff pastry or writing computer code. Rather than being an esoteric gift, it applies to any skill acquired by hard graft. The book also reminds us of the true meaning of kung fu (the Pinyin transliteration is gongfu). Everybody is kung fu fighting, but the violence is cartoonish rather than graphic and there is a sense – as with Rowling and Tolkien – that despite the strangeness of the world, we are guided by a compassionate writer whose heart is in the right place. These include Ke Zhen’e, a blind martial artist who shoots his signature weapon – iron devilnuts – by orienting himself according to directions from the I Ching Lotus Huang, a brilliant young female fighter travelling the country in disguise, and a terrifying female villain called Twice Foul Dark Wind, who is the greatest exponent of Nine Yin Skeleton Claw kung fu, a martial discipline that is nastier than it sounds. He’s surrounded by a galaxy of colourful minor characters. But his innocent goodheartedness – another Taoist ideal – makes him a captivating hero. Guo is naive and not particularly gifted – a wink, perhaps, at the idea of the uncarved block in the Tao Te Ching: the natural object of unlimited potential. The novel gives us the history of strange martial techniques, assesses the merits of different schools of kung fu, and describes the mysterious internal alchemy that gives rise to the most devastating physical force. As martial artists square off, evocatively named strikes are responded to with equally evocatively named parries: Search the Sea, Behead the Dragon Seize the Basket by the Handle and, only to be used in extremis, the desperation move: Sword of Mutual Demise. To paraphrase Miss Jean Brodie: for those of us who like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing we like. It blends real and fictional characters, teems with incident – reversals, unexpected meetings, betrayals, cliffhangers – and, most of all, dwells for page after page on lovingly described combat. Photograph: DramaPandaĪ plot summary barely conveys the extraordinary energy of this book. The hero Guo Jing in a 2017 TV adaptation of Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes epic.
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