Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers, A (Vintage Voy

Vintage Voyages: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself) 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... Review: "Written in deliberately bad English, this is a wonderful comic romance" -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * "Xiaolu is a fabulous writer, fresh, witty and intelligent. She handles language in an astonishing way. I don't think I have enjoyed a book as much in the last twelve months and I am looking forward to hearing a lot more from this promising young voice." * Joanne Harris * "A delicate combination of unwitting humour, sadness, sex and displacement. Unputdownable." * Katie Fforde * "Her characterisation of Z's lover is subtle and profound... This novel will be compared with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, but it is so much better than that. 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." -- Scarlett Thomas * Independent on Sunday * "An auspicious English language debut...its young heroine adrift in a London whose people and customs prove as full of pitfalls as the tongue she struggles to master." -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent, Christmas books special * SHORTLISTED FOR ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION Author Biography: Xiaolu Guo was born in 1973 in a fishing village in south China. She studied film at Beijing Film Academy, worked as a screenwriter and film teacher as well as writing several books in Chinese. Xiaolu moved to London in 2002 where she began a diary written in English which became the seed for the novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Village of Stone, a novel first published in China, appeared in English translation in 2004.