Xiaolu Guo

Village of Stone brilliantly evokes the harshness of life on the typhoon-battered coast of China, where fishermen are often lost to violent seas and children regularly swept away.

Part travelogue, part historical reflection, Everyday Tang is a profound, and often startling, meditation on one period in Chinese history: the magnificent and cosmopolitan Tang Dynasty (618-907). In the summer of 2024, Xiaolu Guo travelled from England to China with her eleven-year-old in search of what remains of the ancient past. As they wander through the great cities of Xi'an and Luoyang, and cross rivers such as the Wei and the Yangzi, Xiaolu ponders the achievements of the Tang in science, arts, trade, spirituality, sexuality and women's freedom which sheds new light on our understanding of the Tang Dynasty.

Moby-Dick reimagined from the perspective of a cross-dressed female sailor'Brilliantly written... ambitious, brave, strange' Philip Hoare'One of the most valuable writers in the world' Deborah Levy1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York. Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville's Moby Dick from a female perspective. As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest. Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick. Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.

'She's no good, that girl. Much too individualistic' This is the story of Fenfang who, determined to carve out a life more independent than her provincial roots, gets a job as a film extra in Beijing. But living a modern life is not as easy as it looks in this tumultuous, messy city. Grappling with the narrow world of cinema, an outworn Communist regime, and the city's far-from-progressive attitudes to women, charismatic Fenfang finds her true freedom in the one place she never expected. 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth is a sparkling and wry coming-of-age story about the changing identity of women in contemporary China. Meet ten of literature's most iconic heroines, jacketed in bold portraits by female photographers from around the world.

A charming and clever account of one womanâ??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.

Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first arrives in London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker...

From one of our most important contemporary Chinese authors: a novel of language and love that tells one young Chinese woman's story of her journey to the West--and her attempts to understand the language, and the man, she adores. Zhuang--or "Z," to tongue-tied foreigners--has come to London to study English, but finds herself adrift, trapped in a cycle of cultural gaffes and grammatical mishaps. Then she meets an Englishman who changes everything, leading her into a world of self-discovery. She soon realizes that, in the West, "love" does not always mean the same as in China, and that you can learn all the words in the English language and still not understand your lover. And as the novel progresses with steadily improving grammar and vocabulary, Z's evolving voice makes her quest for comprehension all the more poignant. With sparkling wit, Xiaolu Guo has created an utterly original novel about identity and the cultural divide.