Once upon a time in the east by xiaolu guo

Xiaolu guo guardian
Xiaolu Guo FRSL is a Chinese-born British author, filmmaker and academic.
The author and director born in 1973 grew up in a fishing village in southern China.

•

Xiaolu
Guo

China and Western Europe, film and literature – writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo works successfully in two cultures, two languages, and two art genres. The author and director born in 1973 grew up in a fishing village in southern China. Initially she studied at the film school in Peking, and later at the National Film and Television School in London. Since 2002 she divides her time between London and Peking.

Due to censorship practices in China, Xiaolu Guo was unable to produce her films here. Yet during her study period she was named best screenplay writer in 1998. Although she was denied permission by the authorities to film her screenplays, Xiaolu Guo was able to publish her stories in the form of novels. Six of her books have appeared in China. Her first novel was translated and praised internationally: “Village of Stone” (Stadt der Steine, Knaus Publishers in Germany). Since 2007 she writes in English, and her English-language publication “Dictionary for Lovers” (2007), nominated for the Orange Prize, became a bestseller and was translated from English into 2

•

Xiaolu Guo

Chinese-British author, filmmaker and academic (born 1973)

Xiaolu Guo FRSL (Chinese: 郭小橹; born 20 November 1973^[2]) is a Chinese-born British author, filmmaker and academic. Her writing and films explore migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation and transnational identities.

Guo has directed a dozen films including documentaries and fiction. Her most well-known films include She, a Chinese and We Went to Wonderland. Her novels have been translated into 28 languages. Nine Continents: A Memoir in and out of China won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017. In 2013, she was named as one of Granta magazine's Best of Young British Novelists, a list drawn up once a decade.^[3] She was an inaugural fellow of the Columbia Institute of Ideas and Imagination in Paris, 2018, and a jury member for the Man Booker Prize 2019.

Early life

Xiaolu Guo grew up with her illiterate grandparents in a village of fishermen in Shitang, then with her parents and brother in the city of Wenling, both in the C

•

About the Author

Xiaolu Guo was born in the Zhejiang province of China and spent the first half of her childhood growing up with her grandparents in a fisherman’s town, and the second in the town of Wenling with her parents and brother. In 1993, she left her province to study at the Beijing Film Academy and later on studied at the National Film and Television School in the UK. She permanently moved to London in 2002 before publishing her first book, Village of Stone, an autobiographical novel originally published in Chinese. From then on, her novels were published in her second language of English and the first novel to be published after this shift was A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers, a novel written in broken English and narrated by a woman who is going to school in London to learn English. In addition to being a novelist, Guo is also a relatively accomplished independent filmmaker who has had her films screened at Rotterdam, London, and France film festivals.

Back to Book Homepage

John Quigley ’19