笑傲江湖 [Xiào Ào Jiāng Hú] The Smiling, Proud Wanderer

by Jin Yong

A new and revised edition of The Proud Smiling Wanderer by Jin Yong. The author's most famous book. The story is different from his most other books in the way this story has no specific historic background, but an in depth portrayal of human nature with its anti-tradition themes.

Genres: Fiction, China

1692 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1989

About the author

Louis Cha, GBM, OBE (born 6 February 1924), better known by his pen name Jin Yong (金庸, sometimes read and/or written as "Chin Yung"), is a modern Chinese-language novelist. Having co-founded the Hong Kong daily Ming Pao in 1959, he was the paper's first editor-in-chief.

Cha's fiction, which is of the wuxia ("martial arts and chivalry") genre, has a widespread following in Chinese-speaking areas, including mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and the United States. His 15 works written between 1955 and 1972 earned him a reputation as one of the finest wuxia writers ever. He is currently the best-selling Chinese author alive; over 100 million copies of his works have been sold worldwide (not including unknown number of bootleg copies).

Cha's works have been translated into English, French, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Burmese, Malay and Indonesian. He has many fans abroad as well, owing to the numerous adaptations of his works into films, television series, comics and video games.


金庸，大紫荊勳賢，OBE（英語：Louis Cha Leung-yung，1924年3月10日－2018年10月30日），本名查良鏞，浙江海寧人，祖籍江西婺源，1948年移居香港。自1950年代起，以筆名「金庸」創作多部膾炙人口的武俠小說，包括《射鵰英雄傳》、《神鵰俠侶》、《鹿鼎記》等，歷年來金庸筆下的著作屢次改編為電視劇、電影等，對華人影視文化可謂貢獻重大，亦奠定其成為華人知名作家的基礎。金庸早年於香港創辦《明報》系列報刊，他亦被稱為「香港四大才子」之一。


Source: https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-tw/%E9%87...

Reviews

[Morris Yen · Rating 5 out of 5]

於個人造詣有所助益，相當推薦!

[Qwetro · Rating 5 out of 5]

相比之前的书剑恩仇录等几本，笑傲江湖真是上品。好看！

[Wuzhou Xiong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best novel by Jing Yong, potentially by far. I just loved the character of the mc so much through out, and how he stayed loyal to his first crush but that didn't stop him from being devoted to his true love. I also loved the agency given to the female lead, who functions as a character without the relationship, and often dictates where the story goes. And for me, the fights are the best out of all Jin Yongs work. Fun fact: Jin Yong literally translates to golden mediocre, an apt descriptor for golden entertainment for the world of men.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

You know these serialized novels are really changing my time perception when I see “81 hours remaining” on my e-reader and go, “It’s not THAT long…”

Anyway, it was really good! I appreciated the theme of chasing one’s own sense of morality / freedom / beauty (exemplified in the music score + friendship with Xiang Wentian). I don’t know what I expected, but it departs pretty early on from the standard hero story, as the hero bears the full brunt of the backlash (bodily, relational, political, etc.) for his insistence on going his own way, and continues to push at the limits of these consequences throughout his journey. In a world where everybody—even those who carefully guard the appearance of uprightness—is motivated by power, the hero is driven mostly by loyalty to those who have shown him kindness (no matter their reputation or affiliation), as well as something else that I can’t put my finger on but which I can only describe as being very remarkable and full of life. The book is (among other things) a not-so-subtle rage against cults of personality and narrow / hypocritical / black-and-white thinking, and when people are made to debase themselves and worship their leaders on pain of death, going up against this status quo requires an equally fierce spirit.

It was fun to see how the iconic characters, plot points, and messages have inspired subsequent media. The final quarter of the book contains some of the most complex and tragic, and also some of the most beautiful, scenes I’ve read in a while. That being said, the female characters often made me shrivel into a dried husk, and the translation that I read (I am saying this wistfully and with full respect as I am highly indebted to fan translators) had errors on every page and became progressively harder to read as the book went on, so all things considered we are going with three stars.

I’m going to be brief, since for a story so well-known I had somehow managed to avoid spoilers: The plot surrounding the 辟邪剑法 is stunning in its portrayal of extreme evil and ambition, while also relying on some wildly disagreeable gender ideology and frankly transphobia to make its critique. “What makes you a man is what makes you a person”—which begins to make sense in a collectivist setting where one’s identity is unimaginably deeply tied to one’s role in the family and the sect, but never succeeds in justifying itself. It is so interesting to read something that explicitly criticizes certain aspects of its culture while also being mired in other thorny aspects of said culture.

[Sebastian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome!

[lE0P9n · Rating 5 out of 5]

empty

[Yiwen Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

任盈盈很聪明，岳灵珊好悲伤。

[XXX · Rating 4 out of 5]

故事特别棒，可是任盈盈这个人物明显是死宅男在家做白日梦的产物。小说中关于岳灵珊的几处感人至深，任盈盈的部分就让人深深感受到了作者的父权主义，至于仪琳的部分，真的恨不得直接跳过。整个故事的布局构思非常棒，只是最后的结局写成这样，在我看来算是烂尾了。