Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Fiction Prize

In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter. Two lovers, Mu and Jian, have been driven apart by forces beyond their control.

As Iona unravels the story of the lovers, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other. Iona, intoxicated by their romance, sets out to bring them back together, but time is running out.

Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists

Prizes

Long-listed for Baileys Womens Prize for Fiction 2015 (UK)

Heart-wrenching… An extraordinary and important book -- Charlie Cooper * Independent *
Beautifully written… Genuinely affecting… Exceptional * Scotland on Sunday *
An ambitious, thought-provoking and engaging narrative -- Jane Shilling * Evening Standard *
Beautifully rendered * New York Times *
Beautifully done -- Viv Groskop * Red *
Piercingly urgent and revelatory * Independent i *
I Am China is a moving tale of life and fate, love and loss, that will stay with the reader long after the last page * New Internationalist *
Dark, witty fiction -- David Evans * Financial Times *
Cleverly crafted * UK Press Syndication *

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.