Wuxia novels in English: where to start

What counts as a wuxia novel?

A wuxia novel is Chinese fiction about martial artists who live by a code of honor in the jianghu, the half-hidden world of rival schools and outlaws.

If you are searching for “martial arts novels” or “kung fu novels,” this is the genre you mean. We explain the word itself, its history and how it differs from cultivation fantasy in Wuxia vs xianxia: what’s the difference? This page is only about what to read, and which English translations exist in print.

The classic authors: Jin Yong, Gu Long and Liang Yusheng

Three twentieth-century writers shaped modern wuxia, and Jin Yong has the most books in English translation.

Jin Yong (金庸, Louis Cha)

Jin Yong (1924–2018) was a Hong Kong writer and newspaper publisher whose martial arts novels have sold more than 300 million copies. His first, The Book and the Sword, began appearing as a newspaper serial in 1955, and his last, The Deer and the Cauldron, finished in 1972. He wrote fifteen novels and novellas, and the first characters of fourteen of their titles form a couplet. His English translations are listed in the table below.

Gu Long (古龙)

Gu Long, the pen name of Xiong Yaohua, was a Taiwan-based novelist and screenwriter who died in 1985. He is best known for the Chu Liuxiang and Little Li Flying Dagger series and for The Eleventh Son. In her introduction to that book, his translator Rebecca S. Tai points to his very short paragraphs, many of them a single sentence.

Liang Yusheng (梁羽生)

Liang Yusheng, the pen name of Chen Wentong (died 2009), is counted as a pioneer of the “new school” of wuxia. His first wuxia novel, Longhu dou jinghua (龙虎斗京华), ran in 1954 in the Hong Kong New Evening Post, the paper where Jin Yong began his own first serial a year later, and he wrote 35 wuxia novels between 1954 and 1983. This guide lists only translations we could confirm in print from a publisher, and we could not confirm one for Liang Yusheng.

Wuxia novels in English: a reading table

These are the classic wuxia novels with English translations we could confirm from publisher pages and library catalogs.

Where to start: a reading order

Begin with the Condor saga, then branch out by mood.

1. A Hero Born. China in 1200 is split by invasion. Guo Jing, the son of a murdered Song patriot, grows up in Genghis Khan’s army and must return south to meet his fate. Keep going through the other three volumes if it holds you.
2. Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, if you want Jin Yong without a four-volume commitment.
3. The Eleventh Son, for a change of voice. Xiao, “the Great Bandit,” is drawn into a fight over a legendary saber, the Deer Carver, and accused of stealing it.
4. The Book and the Sword, to see Jin Yong’s first novel and how the genre looked at the start of his career.
5. The Deer and the Cauldron, last. Its hero, Trinket, is an irreverent rogue among beggars, monks, Jesuits, Manchu princes and Ming loyalists. Oxford calls him unlike Jin Yong’s more conventional, valorous heroes, so the joke works better once you have met those heroes.
6. A Past Unearthed, when you are ready for the sequel to the Condor story.

The older roots: Water Margin

Before modern wuxia there was Water Margin (水浒传 Shuihu zhuan), a Ming dynasty novel attributed to Shi Nai’an about 108 outlaws who gather at Mount Liang.

It is older than the modern genre, but its outlaw brotherhood became a model for later martial storytelling. It has several English versions, including Pearl S. Buck’s All Men Are Brothers (1933), Sidney Shapiro’s Outlaws of the Marsh (Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 1980) and John and Alex Dent-Young’s five-volume The Marshes of Mount Liang (Chinese University Press, 1994–2002). Our wuxia vs xianxia guide covers the genre’s earlier roots in more detail.

Questions

What is the best wuxia novel to read first in English?

Start with A Hero Born, the first volume of Jin Yong’s Legends of the Condor Heroes, translated by Anna Holmwood and published by MacLehose Press in 2018. It is one of Jin Yong’s most famous works, and all four volumes are in English.

In what order should I read Legends of the Condor Heroes?

Read the four English volumes in this order: A Hero Born (2018), A Bond Undone (2019), A Snake Lies Waiting (2020) and A Heart Divided (2021). The sequel, Return of the Condor Heroes, begins with A Past Unearthed (2023), translated by Gigi Chang.

Are kung fu novels the same as wuxia?

Mostly. In English, “kung fu novel” and “martial arts novel” usually mean wuxia: Chinese fiction about martial artists who live by a code of honor. Wuxia is the Chinese name for the genre, and kung fu stories sit at its more realistic end.

Has Gu Long been translated into English?

Yes. The Eleventh Son (萧十一郎), translated by Rebecca S. Tai, was published by Homa & Sekey Books in 2004. It is the only Gu Long novel this guide could confirm in an English print edition.

Is The Deer and the Cauldron a good first wuxia novel?

It works better as a second or third. Its hero, Trinket, is a comic anti-hero who is unlike the more conventional, valorous heroes of Jin Yong’s other novels, so the book reads better once you have met those heroes.

Read it as a story

In The Forgotten Arts, Shen Mo, the last master of Origin Gate, a hidden house of the old martial arts, reaches its burning gate on the night it falls. He wakes in a modern city where Detective Su Yue is looking at a death no doctor can explain. The first 20 comic chapters are free, and the first 10 novel chapters of Book One are free.

In Redwood Gate, twelve-year-old Kai Lin washes dishes in his parents’ restaurant and practices one kung-fu move five hundred times, and 24 kids compete for three places at a martial academy hidden among the redwoods. The first 20 comic chapters are free.

More legends: the nine-tailed fox, the Legend of the White Snake, wuxia vs xianxia and Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio.

Sources

• Hachette UK (MacLehose Press), A Hero Born. hachette.co.uk
• Hachette UK (MacLehose Press), A Bond Undone. hachette.co.uk
• Hachette UK (MacLehose Press), A Snake Lies Waiting. hachette.co.uk
• Hachette UK (MacLehose Press), A Heart Divided. hachette.co.uk
• Hachette UK (MacLehose Press), A Past Unearthed. hachette.co.uk; Hachette Australia, A Past Unearthed: Return of the Condor Heroes Volume 1. hachette.com.au
• British Library catalogue: A Snake Lies Waiting (2020) eld.bl.uk; A Heart Divided (2021) eld.bl.uk
• Paper Republic, “射雕英雄传 (Legend of the Condor Heroes)” (A Hero Born, UK and US editions). paper-republic.org
• University of Edinburgh, Translation Studies seminar listing for Gigi Chang, 30 March 2022. llc.ed.ac.uk
• Renditions, Chinese University of Hong Kong, “Jin Yong.” cuhk.edu.hk/renditions
• Oxford University Press China, The Deer and the Cauldron (3-vol set). oupchina.com.hk
• John Minford, publications list. johnminford.com
• China Heritage, “Louis Cha’s The Deer & the Cauldron in English.” chinaheritage.net
• Robert Chard, review of Fox Volant of the Snowy Mountain, trans. Olivia Mok, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 59, no. 3 (1996). cambridge.org
• University of Zurich, China and the West database: The Book and the Sword e-aoi.uzh.ch; The Deer and the Cauldron e-aoi.uzh.ch
• Homa & Sekey Books, The Eleventh Son. homabooks.com
• YellowBridge, review of The Eleventh Son. yellowbridge.com
• NPR, “Chinese Classic ‘Condor Heroes’ Takes Wing In English,” 4 March 2018. npr.org
• NPR, “Louis Cha, Who Wrote Beloved Chinese Martial Arts Novels As Jin Yong, Dies,” 31 October 2018. npr.org
• Boston College Ricci Institute Library, English translations of Shuihu zhuan (Buck, Shapiro). web.bc.edu
• Review of The Broken Seals: Part One of The Marshes of Mount Liang, trans. John and Alex Dent-Young (Chinese University Press, 1994), The China Quarterly. cambridge.org
• Wikipedia (pointers): Jin Yong, Gu Long, Liang Yusheng, Water Margin.