'A fragmentary meditation on the nature of love' Guardian

A Chinese woman comes to post-Brexit London to start over - just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch.

Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build their future together.

Playing with language and the cultural differences that our narrator encounters as she settles into her new life, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Fiction Prize In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter. Two lovers, Mu and Jian, have been driven apart by forces beyond their control. As Iona unravels the story of the lovers, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other. Iona, intoxicated by their romance, sets out to bring them back together, but time is running out. Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists

Rock 'n' roll, revolution, and romance are seductively woven together in this intense and moving novel from the author of Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
 
In her flat in north London, Iona Kirkpatrick sets to work on a new project translating a collection of letters and diaries by a Chinese musician. With each letter and journal entry, Iona becomes more and more intrigued with the unfolding story of two lovers: Jian, a punk rocker who believes there is no art without political commitment, and Mu, the young woman he loves as fiercely as his ideals.
 
Iona cannot possibly know that Jian is mere miles away in Dover, awaiting the uncertain fate of a political exile. Mu is still in Beijing, writing letters to London and desperately trying to track Jian down. As Iona charts the course of their twenty-year relationship, from its early beginnings at Beijing University to Jian’s defiant march in the Jasmine Revolution, her own empty life takes on an urgent purpose: to bring Jian and Mu together again before it’s too late.

The acclaimed novelist’s award-winning memoir of growing up in a remote Chinese fishing village is “a rich and insightful coming-of-age story” (Kirkus).
 
The acclaimed author of A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers and I Am China, Xiaolu Guo grew up an unwanted child in a poor fishing village on the East China Sea. But a Taoist monk made a startling prediction to her grandmother: that Guo would prove herself to be a peasant warrior and grow up to travel the nine continents.
 
In Nine Continents, Guo tells the story of a curious mind coming of age in an inhospitable country, and her determination to seek a life beyond the limits of its borders. From her family’s village to a rapidly changing Beijing, to a life beyond China, Nine Continents presents a fascinating portrait of how the Cultural Revolution shaped families, and how the country’s economic ambitions have given rise to great change. This “moving and often exhilarating” memoir confirms Xiaolu Guo as one of world literature’s most urgent voices (Financial Times, UK).

Xiaolu Guo is one of the most acclaimed Chinese-born writers of her generation, an iconoclastic and completely contemporary voice. Her vivid, poignant memoir, Nine Continents is the story of a curious mind coming of age in an inhospitable country, and her determination to seek a life beyond the limits of its borders.

Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home. Eventually Xiaolu determined to see the world beyond China for herself, and now, after fifteen years in Europe, her words resonate with the insight of someone both an outsider and at home, in a world far beyond the country of her birth.

Nine Continents presents a fascinating portrait of China in the eighties and nineties, how the Cultural Revolution shaped families, and how the country's economic ambitions gave rise to great change. It is also a moving testament to the birth of a creative spirit, and of a new generation being raised to become citizens of the world. It confirms Xiaolu Guo as one of world literature's most urgent voices.

From one of our most important contemporary Chinese authors: a novel of language and love that tells one young Chinese woman's story of her journey to the West—and her attempts to understand the language, and the man, she adores. Zhuang—or “Z,” to tongue-tied foreigners—has come to London to study English, but finds herself adrift, trapped in a cycle of cultural gaffes and grammatical mishaps. Then she meets an Englishman who changes everything, leading her into a world of self-discovery. She soon realizes that, in the West, “love” does not always mean the same as in China, and that you can learn all the words in the English language and still not understand your lover. And as the novel progresses with steadily improving grammar and vocabulary, Z's evolving voice makes her quest for comprehension all the more poignant. With sparkling wit, Xiaolu Guo has created an utterly original novel about identity and the cultural divide.

'This generation's Wild Swans' Daily Telegraph

Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. They are strangers to her.

When she is born in 1973, her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam leaves, they leave Xiaolu with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village on the East China Sea.

Once Upon a Time in the East takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship, underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. Now, after a decade in Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only come from someone who is both an outsider and at home.

*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award*
*Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award*
*Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize*
*Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize*

From the author of the 2007 Orange Prize finalist A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers comes a wholly original and thoroughly captivating coming-of-age story that follows a bright, impassioned young woman as she rushes headlong into the maelstrom of a rapidly changing Beijing to chase her dreams.
Twenty-one year old Fenfang Wang has traveled one thousand eight hundred miles to seek her fortune in contemporary urban Beijing, and has no desire to return to the drudgery of the sweet potato fields back home. However, Fenfang is ill-prepared for what greets her: a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a city under rampant destruction and slap-dash development, and a sexist attitude seemingly more in keeping with her peasant upbringing than the country’s progressive capital. Yet Fenfang is determined to live a modern life. With courage and purpose, she forges ahead, and soon lands a job as a film extra. While playing roles like woman-walking-over-the bridge and waitress-wiping-a-table help her eke out a meager living, Fenfang comes under the spell of two unsuitable young men, keeps her cupboard stocked with UFO noodles, and after mastering the fever and tumult of the city, ultimately finds her true independence in the one place she never expected.
At once wry and moving, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth gives us a clear-eyed glimpse into the precarious and fragile state of China’s new identity and asserts Xiaolu Guo as her generation’s voice of modern China.

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers heralds the American debut of a remarkably gifted young writer.
Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang, the daughter of shoe factory owners in rural China, has come to London to study English. She calls herself Z because English people can’t pronounce her name, but she’s no better at their language. Set loose to find her way through a confusion of cultural gaffes and grammatical mishaps, she winds up lodging with a Chinese family and thinks she might as well not have left home. But then she meets an English man who changes everything. From the moment he smiles at her, she enters a new world of sex, freedom, and self-discovery. But she also realizes that, in the West, “love” does not always mean the same as in China, and that you can learn all the words in the English language and still not understand your lover.
Drawing on her diaries from when she first arrived in the UK, Xiaolu Guo winningly writes the story in steadily improving English grammar and vocabulary. Freshly humorous, sexy, and poignant, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is an utterly original novel about language, identity, and the cultural divide.</p>

When a young Chinese woman, newly arrived in London, moves in with her English boyfriend, she decides it’s time to write a Chinese-English dictionary for lovers. Xiaolu’s first novel in English is an utterly original journey of self-discovery.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

2005年英國《獨立報》外國小說獎決選作品
2006年《都柏林國際文學獎》提名
「我知道我仍想著經歷過我身體的那些人，想著那些我也曾經歷過他們生命的那些人。」
她以為她已經忘掉過去所有的事情，可是，那一絲氣味卻勾起她久遠的生命，那充滿自由、悠閒、孤獨、恥辱的童年，那關於愛情與離別、生命與死亡的陰影，她像一隻要逃離玻璃缸的金魚外貌，努力找出回到大海的路。
我知道我仍想著經歷過我身體的那些人，想著那些我也曾經歷過他們生命的那些人。陰影與光芒，一切都從那兒開始。
離開一個地方，離開過往。可是，大海吸納了過往的聲音與氣味，卻在另一個時空中傳散開來。
離開童年的海邊小鎮，她來到北京，時間長的讓她說話、行動、想法、感受都像一個地道的城市人，連煩惱也像－－無聊的工作、不知未來的愛情、冷漠的關係、看似忙碌卻又一無所成，日復一日相同的對話或者沉默，連做愛都驅散不了的虛無感……
直到有一天，從家鄉小鎮，不知是誰寄來的一條鰻魚乾，那濃厚的腥味挑釁似地刺入她塵封的記憶，於是，記憶潰堤，她又成為那個名喚「阿狗」的孩子，沒有父親母親，只有一輩子都不快樂的祖父，與一輩子安安靜靜的祖母，在那個家家戶戶都打漁的小村子，只有她從來不曾像其他人一樣，在海邊盼回什麼人。
她是沒有人管的野孩子，就連村裡頭的啞巴都要欺負她，將她監禁在黑暗的地洞中，死亡成了她唯一的企盼，因為，比死亡還可怕的是入骨的恥辱。
而與這個村子所有人命運緊密聯繫的大海，總是放肆地強取豪奪，最後也帶走了啞巴。只有這個石頭小鎮的荒涼，是它不想帶走的部分，她一次又一次站在唯一能離開此地的道路上，但總是沒有錢買車票，唯一能夠走遠的一次，卻是去取出自己的小孩。她的生命，碎裂如海邊的浪花，她以為，只要遠離大海，就能不再受它纏繞與詛咒。
但她怎麼也沒想到，大海藉由風乾的腥味，強迫她面對曾經想要逃離的一切，隨著氣味而出現的，是她不曾想像過、她以為從來不曾存在的父親，帶著生命腐朽之前的迴光，此時此刻，她終於可以大聲哭喊，融化了像石頭般堅硬而永不消失的黑暗與陰鬱，也才讓她有更多的力氣，可以任由過去的浪，打掉現在一身的灰，而屬於未來的生命色彩，才得以重新顯現。
「悲傷的故事往往具有童話故事或者傳奇的神秘魅力，閱讀這個故事，就像是在夢中找尋自己。」
－－Doris Lessing
「打開這本書，你會看見一個女孩，以夢想與努力，從中國的過往向前走來，進入現在。」
－－作家，著有《中國好女人》／欣然
「郭小櫓靈巧地編織著她的複線故事，以二十一世紀的北京風景對比時間停滯的小鎮景象描繪出中國的生活。早期中國小說中呈現的冷酷現實往往留給讀者悲劇的苦澀，郭小櫓不取此道，她關心的是尋求和協、救贖與重生。」
－－《獨立報》The Independent
「郭小櫓的書帶有一種浪漫，甚至可說是神話特質，儘管書中的主題殘酷而猙獰，但卻也留給讀者一絲未來的希望。」
－－《南華早報》
「《我心中的石頭鎮》是一部非常詩意的作品，也有在大部分中國傳記中缺乏的神祕特質。」
－－City Weekend，Beijing＆Shanghai Issue
「郭小櫓這部悲慘而坦白的小說使她成為那個國家中最成功的文學輸出之一。」
－－《衛報》
「《我心中的石頭鎮》所寫不只是關於小村落中的抑鬱與大城市中的疏離冷漠，在其中也顯露了神奇的現實主義痕跡，與其說它像中國，不如說像是托馬斯‧哈代加上薩丁尼亞那樣的寒意與冷酷。」
－－The Asian Review of Books
以上資料from：誠品網路書店簡介
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When a young Chinese woman, newly arrived in London, moves in with her English boyfriend, she decides it’s time to write a Chinese-English dictionary for lovers. Xiaolu’s first novel in English is an utterly original journey of self-discovery.

Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself) arrives in London to spend a year learning English. Struggling to find her way in the city, and through the puzzles of tense, verb and adverb; she falls for an older Englishman and begins to realise that the landscape of love is an even trickier terrain...