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. 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

What happens when a Chinese girl adrift in Britain falls for an Englishman adrift in life: a funny, sexy, romantic novel. Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2007.

About the Author
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.

Reviews
Written in deliberately bad English, this is a wonderful comic romance -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
An utterly captivating, and disorientating, journey both through language and through love * Independent *
Guo uses her minimalist messed-up prose not just to tell an affecting coming-of-age story but to ask deep questions about the real differences between Chinese and British culture and language * Independent on Sunday *
Funny and charming...more than a love story; its psychology is politically acute, and things noted lightly in it linger in the mind * Guardian *
It is impossible not to be charmed by her matter-of-factness. As the story grows in complexity with Z's growing vocabulary - the narration acquires fluency and tenses almost imperceptibly - it is equally hard not to be impressed by Guo's vivacious talent * Sunday Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780099501473
Author Xiaolu Guo
Format Paperback
Page Count 368
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 293g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 22mm