100th Birthday of Jin Yong

Tales of chivalrous and daring martial arts heroes have dominated Chinese entertainment for centuries, but only recently has the Wuxia genre gained in popularity throughout the West, predominantly in the form of mainstream movies. The literary world is finally catching up with classics such as Jin Yong’s A Hero Born, which was translated into English in 2018 just months before his death. His Legends of the Condor Heroes series was written in serialised form between the 1950s and 1970s and has sold hundreds of millions of copies. They are constantly reinvented in different media, from moving image adaptations, to comics, to games. In this exciting event celebrating the centenary of the author’s birth and marking the 65th anniversary of the series, one of the book’s English translators, Gigi Chang, sits down with Peter McSweeney to explore how the thrilling experience of reading Jin Yong’s Chinese martial arts adventures is recreated for an English language readership.

Moderator: Peter McSweeney