Books
by Xiaolu Guo
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A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers |
When the author arrived in London she began a diary which became the seed for this romantic comedy - written in deliberately bad English - about a Chinese girl's attempts to understand the language, weird customs and attitudes she encounters. Then she meets an Englishman who changes everything and she enters a new world of sex, freedom and self-discovery in which she learns that the Chinese meaning of Love is sometimes different to that of the West's.
*Shortlisted for the Orange Broadband prize for fiction 2007
(Jenny Baker - bwl 41 August 2007) |
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Village of Stone |
A refreshingly unsentimental evocation of the hidden lives of the billion-plus who exist in China's scattered northern coastal villages. Little Dog - orphaned, taken in by silent, harsh grandparents, fish her whole life - discovers, when 7 years old, an unknown thing: Happiness and that her real name is Coral. Finally, she lands in Bei-jing, 18 years old, finding a different, freer but still hidden-away life. A satisfying, informative read.
(Joan Jackson - bwl 36 September 2006) |
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