XIAOLU GUO

In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter: Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet. In a detention centre in Dover exiled Chinese musician Jian is awaiting an unknown fate. In Beijing his girlfriend Mu sends desperate letters to London to track him down, her last memory of them together a roaring rock concert and Jian the king on stage. Until the state police stormed in. As Iona unravels the story of these Chinese lovers from their first flirtations at Beijing University to Jian's march in the Jasmine Revolution, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other while Iona feels more and more alive. Intoxicated by their romance, Iona sets out to bring them back together, but time seems to be running out.

Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. They are strangers to her. When she is born her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam leaves, they leave Xiaolu with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village on the East China Sea. It's a strange beginning. A Wild Swans for a new generation, Once Upon a Time in the East takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship, underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. Now, after a decade in Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only come from someone who is both an outsider and at home. Xiaolu Guo's extraordinary memoir is a handbook of life lessons. How to be an artist when censorship kills creativity and the only job you can get is writing bad telenovela scripts. How to be a woman when female babies are regularly drowned at birth and sexual abuse is commonplace. Most poignantly of all: how to love when you've never been shown how

Z is a 23-year-old Chinese language student who has come to London to learn English. When the book begins she can barely ask for a cup of tea, but when language comes, so does love. As she gets to know British culture she also falls for an older English bachelor. It`s a million miles away from the small Chinese town she comes from, where her parents want nothing more for her than that she should follow them into the shoe business. Z learns about sex, humour, companionship and passion, but she also learns the painful truth that language is also a barrier and the more you know about it, the less you understand. Written in short chapters, each the definition of a word, this is a brilliantly clever book that pokes fun at England and China and explores the endless possibilities for misunderstanding between East and West, men and women.

A brave young woman negotiates Beijing life in search of love and friendship in the daring new novel by Xiaolu Guo, Orange Prize shortlisted author and 'one of China's most successful literary exports' (Guardian)So I was the 6787th person in Beijing wanting to act in the film and TV industry. There were 6786 young and beautiful, or ugly and old people before me trying to get a role. I felt the competition, but compared with 1.6 billion people in China, 6786 was only the population of my village. I felt an urge to conquer this new village.' Life as a film extra in Beijing might seem hard, but Fenfang - the spirited heroine of Xiaolu Guo's new novel - won't be defeated. She has travelled 1800 miles to seek her fortune in the city, and has no desire to return to the never-ending sweet potato fields back home. Determined to live a modern life, Fenfang works as a cleaner in the Young Pioneer's movie theatre, falls in love with unsuitable men and keeps her kitchen cupboard stocked with UFO instant noodles. As Fenfang might say, Heavenly Bastard in the Sky, isn't it about time I got my lucky break?

'So I was the 6787th person in Beijing wanting to act in the film and TV industry. There were 6786 young and beautiful, or ugly and old people before me trying to get a role. I felt the competition, but compared with 1.6 billion people in China, 6786 was only the population of my village. I felt an urge to conquer this new village.' Life as a film extra in Beijing might seem hard, but Fenfang - the spirited heroine of Xiaolu Guo's new novel - won't be defeated. She has travelled 1800 miles to seek her fortune in the city, and has no desire to return to the never-ending sweet potato fields back home. Determined to live a modern life, Fenfang works as a cleaner in the Young Pioneer's movie theatre, falls in love with unsuitable men and keeps her kitchen cupboard stocked with UFO instant noodles. As Fenfang might say, Heavenly bastard in the sky, isn't it about time I got my lucky break?

The Lovers in the Age of Indifference are tough romantics from every corner of the planet: a marriage splinters during a game of mahjong; a depressed fiancee is lifted by a mid-air encounter with a H

Una joven china, estudiante en Londres, entabla relaciones amorosas con un hombre mayor que ella; como no sabeinglés, se sirve de un diccionario para entenderse con su amante. Pero las definiciones del diccionario ponen de relieveel desfase entre realidad y lenguaje, y su imperfecto ingles revela la imperfeccion de la comunicacion humana a la vez que una verdad incuestionable: el aprendizaje del amor es mas dificil que el de los idiomas. Todo ello con mucho humor, ternura e ironia. Una voz fresca, divertida y critica que ahonda en la condicion humana y en las diferencias entre la cultura occidental y la oriental.

A tale of the unexpected from Orange Prize shortlisted Xiaolu Guo, whose new novel is set in a Chinese peasant village in the near future.

Coral and her slacker boyfriend, Red, live on the ground floor of a tower block in the megalopolis that is twenty-first-century Beijing. Red thinks jobs are for idiots and just wants to play Frisbee; Coral makes ends meet by working in a video rental shop. They eat fast food, try to ignore the claustrophobia of having twenty-five storeys above them, and lose themselves in sex. But then, one day, someone sends Coral a dried eel through the post. As the smell of the sea floods her small flat, she is transported back to the fishing village where she grew up - the Village of Stone she has tried so hard to forget. This haunting, beautiful novel tells the story of one little girl's struggle to build a life for herself against all odds. At the same time it is an incisive portrait of China's new urban youth, who have hidden behind their modern lifestyle all the poverty and cruelty of their past.

When a young Chinese woman, newly arrived in London, moves in with her English boyfriend, she decides it's time to write a Chinese-English dictionary for lovers. Xiaolu's first novel in English is an utterly original journey of self-discovery.

This book is long listed 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.

VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mindTwenty-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.... NOTA: El libro no esta en español, sino en ingles.

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. 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.

Life as a film extra in Beijing might seem hard, but Fenfang wont be defeated. Determined to live a modern life, Fenfang works as a cleaner in the Young Pioneers movie theatre, falls in love with unsuitable men and keeps her kitchen cupboard stocked with UFO instant noodles.