Book and the Sword
Regular price
€25.99
A lost city in the desert, wolf packs, a book, and, of course, a sword...
The Book and the Sword was Louis Cha's first novel, published in 1955, and quickly established him as one of the new masters of the wuxia genre. The novel is panoramic in scope and includes the fantastical elements for which Cha is well-known: secret societies, kung fu masters, a lost desert city guarded by wolf packs, and the mysterious Fragrant Princess, an embellishment of an actual historical figure - although whether she actually smelled of flowers, we will never know. Further to that Cha revives the legend about the great eighteenth-century Manchu Emperor Qian Long which claims that he was in fact not a Manchu but a Han Chinese as a result of a baby swap.
The Book and the Sword is a rip-roaring tale of Chinese kung fu masters battling it out for the future of the Chinese empire and control of central Asia.
Louis Cha (Jin Yong) was, until his recent retirement, founder and publisher of the Ming Pao Daily news, Hong Kong, Shin Ming Daily News, Singapore, and related publications. He is best known, however, as a writer and is the most widely read novelist in Chinese communities all over the world. His Martial Arts novels, originally written for newspaper serialization, have been adapted for TV, film, audio cassette, strip cartoon, computer games, and restaurant menus.
Graham Earnshaw is editor-in-chief of Xinhua Finance, managing director of SinoMedia Ltd, and a director and founder of Park 97 in Shanghai. He speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, and taught himself to read Chinese. He has written several books, including a China travel guide and a book on China's dotcom revolution.
John Minford has translated several works in Chinese fiction and poetry into English including, with David Hawkes, The Story of the Stone.
Rachel May is a literary editor, who has collaborated on several translations from the Chinese. Her novel Love in a Chinese Garden was published in 1997.