Wandering Sword (Volume 1 and 2)

Author: Jin Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-08-01
Features: A Journey to the West is a remarkable book. Among the legendary martial arts novels, it can be considered the most extraordinary. Because of its uniqueness, many people love it, reading it over and over again and being unable to put it down. Yet, because of its strangeness, many also dismiss it, thinking it has "no meaning." And because of its uniqueness, perhaps many others haven’t truly understood it. What makes it extraordinary, first and foremost, is that it portrays the pure martial arts world and the affairs of the Jianghu, all of which are purely the author’s imagination and fiction. Second, it removes the narrative threads of historical figures and events. On one hand, this certainly loses some of the aforementioned benefits, but on the other hand, it can correspondingly add other advantages. The extraordinary imagination, the brilliant narration, and the profound meaning of the novel A Journey to the West are precisely due to this freedom and liberation. This book no longer follows the structure of "historical background – Jianghu legends – life stories," but instead adopts a new structure of "Jianghu legends – life stories – human nature fables." This is also his new creative principle and artistic pursuit.