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.