A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers heralds the American debut of a remarkably gifted young writer.

Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang, the daughter of shoe factory owners in rural China, has come to London to study English. She calls herself Z because English people can’t pronounce her name, but she’s no better at their language. Set loose to find her way through a confusion of cultural gaffes and grammatical mishaps, she winds up lodging with a Chinese family and thinks she might as well not have left home. But then she meets an English man who changes everything. From the moment he smiles at her, she enters a new world of sex, freedom, and self-discovery. But she also realizes that, in the West, “love” does not always mean the same as in China, and that you can learn all the words in the English language and still not understand your lover.

Drawing on her diaries from when she first arrived in the UK, Xiaolu Guo winningly writes the story in steadily improving English grammar and vocabulary. Freshly humorous, sexy, and poignant, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is an utterly original novel about language, identity, and the cultural divide.</p>

郭小橹，1973年生于浙江温岭石塘镇渔村，18岁就读北京电影学院，获学士及硕士学位，写剧本，做电影导演，发表小说和影评，出版有文集《电影地图》、《电影理论笔记》，小说《芬芳的37°2》、《我心中的石头镇》和电影剧本《我妈妈的男朋友是谁》等。2002年起旅居英国，至今拍了六部长短片，包括纪录北京申奥期间的《嵌入肉体的城市》，获法国巴黎“国际人权影展”大奖、描写城乡及归乡情结的《今天的鱼怎么样？》，获2007年法国 Créteil“国际女性影展”评审团大奖，以及藉由双亲的东西行旅透视文化冲突的新片《西行之路》等。