Books by Xiaolu Guo

Life as a film extra in Beijing might seem hard, but Fenfang 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?Longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize.

Defiant, humorous and insightful, 'Not Quite Right For Us' pierces through the hierarchical mechanics of class, race, gender. A celebration of outsiderness and an ode to otherness, 'Not Quite Right For Us' is a singular collection of stories, essays and poems by a dynamic mix of established and surging voices alike, edited by Sharmilla Beezmohun.

'It is hard not to be impressed by Guo's vivacious talent' Sunday TimesA story of desire, love and language - and the meaning of home - told through conversations between two loversA Chinese woman comes to London to start a new life, away from her old world.

Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. This book takes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. This memoir is a handbook of life lessons.

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...

Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Fiction PrizeIn a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter.

Her world is turned upside down when she sights a UFThing - a spinning plate in the sky - and helps the Westerner in distress whom she discovers in the shadow of the alien craft. And when the Westerner that Kwok Yun saved repays her kindness with a large dollar cheque she becomes a local celebrity, albeit under constant surveillance...

The lovers in the age of indifference are tough romantics from every corner of the planet: a marriage splinters during a game of mah jong;

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

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.

Roman fra det moderne Kina.Fra et beskedent bondeliv i en idyllisk, men kvælende kinesisk landsby til Beijings beskidte skønhed. Det er længslen efter ´de skinnende ting´ i livet, der driver den unge pige Fenfang mod storbyen, hvor mulighederne, men også ensomhed og kynisme lurer. Efter en tid med forskelligt lønarbejde opsøger Fenfang Beijings Filmstudier og søger arbejde som statist. Det bliver dagen, hvor hendes skæbnesvangre forvandling finder sted – men ikke helt som hun forestiller sig.En både varm, morsom og usentimental beretning om at være ung - i dagens Kina og i det hele taget.