MY BATTLE OF HASTINGS cover reveal

Chatto & Windus have just released their great cover for Xiaolu Guo’s new book MY BATTLE OF HASTINGS, published on 1st August by editor Kaiya Shang. I love the linocut sea swirls by Becca Thorne!

It is a bit surreal to me that I have been working recently on two books that quote and find inspiration in the beautiful Anglo-Saxon poem ‘The Seafarer’, one by Alice Albinia exploring her own Britishness in The Britannias, and now Xiaolu reflecting on becoming British after growing up in a Chinese fishing village. There’s something in the water! 

‘This is a beautiful, witty meditation on cultural cross-pollination on the English coast, and the meaning of home and history for a wandering artist’ ― Alice Albinia, author of The Britannias

‘Magnificent, brutal and poetic’ ― Iain Sinclair

‘With the eye of a filmmaker and the soul of a poet, Xiaolu transforms every experience into something thrilling and unique. […] One of the most alchemical writers of our time’ ― Chloe Aridjis

 ‘A book to share and savour, bright and brilliant against the grey, grim post-Brexit, xenophobic times within and against which Guo writes’ ― So Mayer