Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself - Westerners cannot pronounce her name) 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...
Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers Paperback edition by Xiaolu Guo
Xiaolu Guo was born in south China. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before she moved to London in 2002. Her books include Village of Stone which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and I Am China which was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. In 2013 she was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Xiaolu has also directed several award-winning films including She, A Chinese and a documentary about London, Late at Night. She lives in London and Berlin.
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself - Westerners cannot pronounce her name) arrives in London to spend a year learning English.Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists
*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award* *Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award**Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize**Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018**A Sunday Times Book of the Year*Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven.
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Fiction PrizeIn a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter.As Iona unravels the story of the lovers, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other.
Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first arrives in London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker...
Because I am a girl I am less likely to go to school Because I am a girl I am more likely to suffer from malnutritionBecause I am a girl I am more likely to suffer violence in the homeBecause I am a girl I am more likely to marry and start a family before I reach my twenties.
Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. This book takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. This memoir is a handbook of life lessons.
Village of Stone brilliantly evokes the harshness of life on the typhoon-battered coast of China, where fishermen are often lost to violent seas and children regularly swept away.
In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter: Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet.
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