Isolationcast #22: Xiaolu Guo

The Sunday Salon with Alice-Azania Jarvis

My guest today has had the most phenomenal life. Xiaolu Guo was born in a fishing village in the south of China. She grew up with her grandparents, until she was seven when she went to live with her parents in a communist-era compound. She studied film in Beijing, then moved London in 2002. Five years later her first English Language novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. We talked about all of this - what it was like to grow up in such a unique political climate, finding creativity amidst the uniformity of the communist regime, the process involved in writing in a second language, her success as a film maker - and more. And she explained why she chose to examine a post-Brexit world in her new novel, A Lover's Discourse. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

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Buy the book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07YYXB238/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

Edited by Chelsey Moore