A Gu Long Primer - The Classics

 Gu Long's literary output is a little harder to pin down than Jin Yong's. For one thing, he was immensely prolific, having published upwards of 70 novels. For another, he was known to work with ghostwriters, especially later in life, and not all of the ghostwritten books/parts of books are properly labelled. And finally, I have somehow managed to avoid reading any of Gu Long's early work, though this was not a conscious choice on my part, but merely a function of what they had in stock at the bookshop where I went to get my wuxia fix. 

The most notable of Gu Long's works have also been adapted for both film and television, though less frequently than Jin Yong's. Again, I'll focus on the television adaptations here, and for the same reasons. I do want to note that, personally, I feel that Gu Long's works are more easily adaptable to film than Jin Yong's, because what's really striking about them is the mood, the premise and the character portraits, rather than the plot.

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