Сяолу Го – лучшие книги

Роман Го Сяолу написан от лица молодой китаянки, отправляющейся в Лондон учить английский язык. О жизни в Европе она не знает ничего; ее представления о Западе - причудливая смесь отрывочных фактов из школьной программы и голливудских клише. Поэтому с первого же дня жизнь в Лондоне становится для нее постижением нового, чужого мира, где все не так: и еда, и грамматика, и отношения между людьми. На помощь ей приходит любовь. Кажется, в симпатичном одиноком англичанине средних лет она находит свое счастье, свое будущее, свой "дом". Но ее возлюбленный - человек очень непростой. У него своя, давным-давно сложившаяся система ценностей, в которой…

'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?

‘It is hard not to be impressed by Guo’s vivacious talent’ Sunday Times
A story of desire, love and language – and the meaning of home – told through conversations between two lovers
A Chinese woman comes to London to start a new life, away from her old world. She knew she would be lonely, adrift in the city, but will her new relationship bring her closer to this land she has chosen, will their love give her a home?
A Lover’s Discourse is

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. The city is disorientating, the people unfriendly, the language a muddle of personal pronouns and moody verbs. 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…
Selected from the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction
Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself - Westerners cannot pronounce her name) 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...
Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists

A Chinese woman comes to post-Brexit London to start over - just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch.
Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build their future together.
Playing with language and the cultural differences that our narrator encounters as she settles into her new life, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.

‘Ah, Xiaolu, you are so big now!’ Then I heard my grandmother speaking behind the woman, ‘This is your mother, call her mother!’ I stared at the woman, perplexed.

Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is six. They are strangers to her. When Xiaolu 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.

Like 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 a picturesque British village. 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.

"Dearest Miu,
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 the place I cannot tell you about yet. Perhaps when I am safe I will be able to let you know where I am…"

Because I am a girl I am less likely to go to school Because I am a girl I am more likely to suffer from malnutrition Because I am a girl I am more likely to suffer violence in the home Because I am a girl I am more likely to marry and start a family before I reach my twenties. Seven authors have visited seven different countries and spoken to young women and girls about their lives, struggles and hopes. The result is an extraordinary collection of writings about prejudice, abuse, and neglect, but also about courage, resilience and changing attitudes. Proceeds from sales of this book will go to PLAN, one of the world's largest child-centered community development organisations.

Eine Reise zum Meer der Erinnerung.

Eine junge Frau in Peking wird mit den Bildern ihrer Kindheit konfrontiert und merkt, dass sie die in ihr verwurzelten Traditionen annehmen muss, um befreiter in die Zukunft zu blicken. Ein kraftvoller, poetischer Roman über das Lebensgefühl junger Chinesen im 21. Jahrhundert.

Der Aal bringt Coral aus dem Gleichgewicht. Ein riesiger Meeresaal, gesalzen und getrocknet, wie es im Dorf ihrer Kindheit Tradition war. Jetzt liegt er in Corals winzigem Appartement im untersten Geschoss eines 25-stöckigen Hochhauses in Peking. Mit dem Aal kommen die Bilder: das abgelegene Fischernest am ostchinesischen Meer, die furchtbaren Stürme, die kargen Klippen, die dicht gedrängten, steinernen Häuser. Alles scheint an diesem Ort aus Stein zu sein, auch die Herzen der Bewohner. Früh verliert Coral Vater und Mutter. Die Großeltern sind Außenseiter und kommunizieren nur über das Enkelkind miteinander. Als ein stummer Junge sie entführt, spendet ihr niemand Trost und Schutz. Schließlich hat Coral nur noch einen Wunsch: der unbarmherzigen Stadt der Steine für immer zu entkommen.
Mit jeder der Aal-Mahlzeiten, die Coral und ihr Freund zu sich nehmen, sickern die Erinnerungen in die lärmende Gegenwart Pekings ein. Und dann steht eines Tages ein Mann vor der Tür, der behauptet, Corals Vater zu sein. Die Vergangenheit ist endgültig zurückgekehrt.
Xiaolu Guo schickt ihre Heldin auf eine eindringliche Reise zu ihren Ursprüngen und damit zu sich selbst. Der Leser erliegt dem Zauber einer ganz und gar fremd anmutenden Welt, die doch in die Gegenwart hineinragt. Er folgt gebannt einer poetischen Parabel über das Reich der Mitte zwischen Tradition und Moderne.