Publication Day Desk

Happy Publication Day to Xiaolu Guo, whose new novel Call Me Ishmaelle is published in the UK by Chatto & Windus today. A US edition is forthcoming from Grove.

Although we have a photo here of Xiaolu’s ‘desk’, in fact she is rarely at it. She is someone who writes at the kitchen table or on the move - not surprising given her peripatetic life (which she writes about in her ‘trilogy’ of memoirs: Once Upon a Time in the East, Radical and My Battle of Hastings).

It is extraordinary to me that I have now known Xiaolu for over 20 years, first meeting her when she came to London from China in the early 2000s. I was an editor at Chatto & Windus at the time, and I published the English translation of Xiaolu’s Chinese novel Village of Stone, as well as working with her when she made the courageous decision to start writing in English, with A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Even more extraordinary is that Xiaolu is now such a confident and brilliant stylist in English that she can pull off a rewriting of Moby-Dick. The admiration is already flooding in, and there are many reviews to come.

I love these two insightful profiles by Anthony Cummins in the Observer and Erica Wagner in Harper’s Bazaar.

The first event for Call Me Ishmaelle took place in Paris at Shakespeare & Company on 6 March, where Xiaolu was in conversation with Adam Biles. The UK launch is today, 20 March, at the London Review of Books bookshop.

See more upcoming events on Xiaolu’s website.