The Heart of an Assassin

Name: The Heart of an Assassin
ISBN: 9787205069940

YishaLiaoning People's Publishing House · ChinaSep 2015

3.7

Word count: 170K words
Chapters: 91
ISBN: 9787205069940

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Summary

Assassins were one of the oldest professions in history. In ancient China, assassination was regarded as a noble calling, one that countless scholars and writers yearned for with admiration. Across the long river of history, assassins have left their profound mark. This book tells the legendary stories of five famous assassins of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods: Zhuan Zhu, Yao Li, Yu Rang, Nie Zheng, and Jing Ke. For their convictions and their promises, they treated life as mere dust, wielding the chivalrous spirit of wandering knights amid flashing swords and shadows. What they embodied is precisely the spirit of "dying for one who truly knows and values them."

Editor's review

With five assassins as its throughline and the turbulent Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods as its backdrop, Yi Sha restores Zhuan Zhu, Yao Li, Yu Rang, Nie Zheng, and Jing Ke from a few lines in historical records into flesh-and-blood people with warmth, hesitation, and resolve. The word "heart" in the title is key: what the author truly asks is not whether an assassination succeeds, but how a person comports himself between faith and loyalty, personal patronage, and life and death. The prose carries a poet's distinctive rhythm, with many short sentences and strong visual imagery; whether describing the fish-intestine sword hidden in a grilled fish or Nie Zheng disfiguring himself to protect his sister, it has novelistic tension while never departing from the basic framework of historical sources. It suits reading chapter by chapter on quiet nights, pausing after each assassin to consider: in their place, would I keep that appointment with certain death? For readers familiar with the idioms and allusions, this is a chance to bring phrases like "the map unrolled reveals the dagger" and "a true man dies for one who understands him" back to life; for those unfamiliar with Warring States history, it is also a convenient path into the era through its figures.

Who it's for

A good fit for

General readers interested in Spring and Autumn and Warring States history and knight-errant culture, who want to approach the era through individuals
Chinese-language readers who enjoy narrative history writing and prefer short sentences and vivid imagery
Secondary-school Chinese teachers and history enthusiasts who need to restore idioms and allusions into complete stories
Adult readers reflecting on questions of faith, promise, and personal choice

Not a good fit for

Historical researchers expecting strict academic verification and source citations for every point
Readers who want only emperors, generals, and grand wars and lack patience for narratives of individual fate
Parents of young children or readers sensitive to violent assassination scenes

Reading tips

Read in the order of Zhuan Zhu, Yao Li, Yu Rang, Nie Zheng, and Jing Ke; after each chapter, pause for a night and note the one choice you find hardest to accept
Keep a map of the Warring States period at hand and look up the locations and neighboring-state relations whenever a figure travels to another state
After finishing each assassin, compare the relevant passages in historical biographies with the book's narrative and note the differences

About the publisher

Liaoning People's Publishing House China · Founded in 1951

Liaoning People's Publishing House is a local publisher focusing on works in the social sciences. Its publishing areas cover philosophy, politics, economics, history and law, and also include dictionaries and reference books. It currently has 332 titles in the database. Its publishing profile is best reflected in translations of foreign literature and Western philosophy, with common categories including foreign literature, Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. Representative books include English-language editions or translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Cervantes's Don Quixote, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Idiot, Hugo's Les Misérables, Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature and Eliot's Middlemarch. Its author resources involve Homer, Cervantes, Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, David Hume, George Eliot and Alexis de Tocqueville. As public information is limited, its specific publishing features require further confirmation through more bibliographic data.

版权信息
第一卷专诸篇
一
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四
五
六
七
八
九
十
十一
十二
十三
十四
十五
十六
十七
第二卷要离篇
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二
三
四
五
六
七
八
九
十
十一
十二
十三
十四
十五
第三卷豫让篇
一
二
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四
五
六
七
八
九
十
十一
十二
十三
十四
十五
十六
第四卷聂政篇
一
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六
七
八
九
十
十一
十二
十三
十四
十五
十六
十七
十八
第五卷荆轲篇
一
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五
六
七
八
九
十
十一
十二
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十四
十五
十六
十七
十八
十九

FAQ

Is this book strict history or literary writing?

Based on the materials, it presents the legendary stories of five assassins in a clearly literary style, emphasizing character psychology and scene reconstruction rather than point-by-point academic verification. Readers can treat it as narrative writing on historical themes; for citing specific historical facts, original sources should still be checked.

Can I read this book without having studied Warring States history?

Yes. The book proceeds through five separate figures and does not depend on a chronological thread, with relatively concentrated relationships among characters. For unfamiliar states and events, a map or brief chronology is enough. After finishing the five assassins, readers may actually gain a preliminary, person-by-person impression of the politics and ethos of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States transition.

Are the five assassins in the book real historical figures?

Zhuan Zhu, Yao Li, Yu Rang, Nie Zheng, and Jing Ke are all figures recorded in pre-Qin texts, several of them in the assassination biographies of historical works. The book develops its stories from these legends; specific dialogue, psychology, and details of daily life are narrative reconstruction and should not be cited sentence by sentence as historical sources.

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About the author

Yisha Author · Chinese · 1966

Yisha, whose original name is Wu Wenjian, was born in Chengdu, Sichuan, in 1966. He is a contemporary poet, writer and translator who graduated from the Chinese Department of Beijing Normal University in 1989 and currently teaches at Xi'an International Studies University. His work spans modern poetry, social fiction, classics and biography, with twenty titles in the collection, including the poetry collections Crossing the Yellow River and Starving Poets to Death, translations such as new editions of Stray Birds, The Crescent Moon and Gitanjali, and the edited anthology New Century Poetry. He has received the Chinese Poetry Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation in the United States and the Asian Poet Award from South Korea. Yisha's poetry is direct and rhythmically distinct, often approaching social reality through everyday experience, and he remains an influential figure in contemporary Chinese poetry; his translation and editorial work also open an important window for poetic exchange between China and the world.