A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
  • Published: 6 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875312
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Jul 2010
Paperback
6 Aug 2019
Paperback
1 Mar 2008
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VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind


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
  • Published: 6 August 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875312
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Xiaolu Guo

Xiaolu Guo was born in south China. She studied at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before moving to London in 2002. Her books include Village of Stone which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and I Am China which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, the Jhalak Prize and the Rathbones Folio Award 2018, and was a Sunday Times Book of the Year.

In 2013 Xiaolu was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She has directed several award-winning films including She, A Chinese, and documentaries about China and Britain. She was a judge for the Booker Prize in 2019, and is currently a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York.

portrait photo of Xiaolu Guo

Also by Xiaolu Guo

Language
A Lover's Discourse
Once Upon A Time in the East
I Am China
UFO in Her Eyes
Lovers in the Age of Indifference
Because I am a Girl
See all

Praise for A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

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 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

Written in deliberately bad English, this is a wonderful comic romance

Eileen Battersby, Irish Times