A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
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Summary
A charming and clever account of one woman’s exploration of love, language and identity. Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself) arrives in London to spend a year learning English.
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A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo
A charming and clever account of one woman’s exploration of love, language and identity. 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... VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind
Written in deliberately bad English, this is a wonderful comic romance -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Xiaolu is a fabulous writer, fresh, witty and intelligentShe 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 *
Xiaolu is a fabulous writer, fresh, witty and intelligentShe 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 *
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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781784875312 |
| ISBN 10 | 1784875317 |
| Title | A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers |
| Author | Xiaolu Guo |
| Series | Vintage Voyages |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2019-06-06 |
| Number of pages | 368 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |