A memoir of growing up in modern China from the Orange-shortlisted and Granta Best Young British Novelist.
Xiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books include- Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and I Am China. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel A Lover's Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin.
Stunning...This book will make your jaw drop, then clench in
anger.
*Telegraph*
Guo is rebellious, flamboyant and fundamentally
optimistic...fascinating.
*Scotland on Sunday*
Riveting...Guo is an angrier, bolder, more ambitious figure than
her forebears.
*The Times*
Utterly compelling... She writes superbly about her struggle to
escape the constraints of gender, poverty and state interference.
This extraordinary memoir will enhance her burgeoning
reputation.
*Sunday Times*
Aside from the fast-paced plot, this is most interesting for its
probing portrayal of Guo’s ambivalent relationship with her
homeland… An impressive feature of this moving and often
exhilarating book is the brutality of her portrait of her
parents.
*Financial Times*
![]() |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
![]() |