A brave young woman negotiates Beijing life in search of love and friendship in the daring new novel by Xiaolu Guo, Orange Prize shortlisted author and 'one of China's most successful literary exports' (Guardian)
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. The English translation of Village of Stone was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her first novel written in English, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, published in 2008, was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. Her most recent novel, I Am China, 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.
A nihilistic, Generation X-style manifesto... Its impudent,
hand-on-hip attitude cannot fail to charm
*New Statesman*
Funny and melancholy, scintillatingly observed, and has a very big
heart
*The Times*
Both a personal odyssey and an insightful commentary about modern
Chinese society and life itself... Xiaolu Guo is an instinctive,
humane witness, her atmospheric, unusually physical narratives are
alive and attractively insistent, inspired variations on the theme
of quest
*Irish Times*
A pure and bracing blast of universal youth... I loved it. It
shines with the utterly blameless, scarily fragile arrogance of
youth itself, the absolute certainty that death is better than
middle age
*Daily Telegraph*
A breath of the freshest air imaginable. She cuts through the smog
of hype and platitude
*Independent*
A feisty and funny rite-of-passage novel...I loved the protagonist,
Fenfang, whose strength of personality allows her to blossom amid
the crushing anonymity of Beijing
*New Statesman*
Guo's prose, combining magic and the matter-of-fact, is a joy to
read.
*Publishing News*
A poignant and playful coming-of-age story and a love-letter to a
Beijing rarely seen by Western readers
*Bookseller*
Enjoyable, lively and well-presented
*Financial Times*
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