Xiaolu Guo
““A breath of the freshest air imaginable. She cuts through the smog of hype and platitude.”
”
Xiaolu Guo is a Chinese British novelist, memoirist and filmmaker. Her novels include A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and I Am China. Her memoir Once Upon A Time In The East won the National Book Critics Circle Award 2017 and shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her recent novel A Lover’s Discourse, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020 and longlisted for the Orwell Prize. Radical, A Life of My Own was published by Vintage and Grove in 2023. My Battle of Hastings will be published by Chatto & Windus in 2024.
Named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2013, she has also directed a dozen films, including How Is Your Fish Today (Sundance Official Selection) and UFO In Her Eyes (TIFF). Her feature She, A Chinese received the Golden Leopard Award at the Locarno Festival 2009. Her documentary We Went to Wonderland was in the Official Selection of ND/NF at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Once Upon A Time Proletarian was selected for the Horizon Section at Venice Film Festival 2009. There have been retrospectives of her films at London’s Whitechapel Gallery (2019), Cinematheque Switzerland (2011), as well as at the Greek Film Archive in Athens (2018). She has been a visiting professor at Columbia University and Baruch College in New York.
Guo is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Published works
