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  • Published: 9 April 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473521810
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 11 hr 46 min
  • Narrators: Sarah Lam, Andrew Leung, Karen Bryson
  • RRP: $22.99

I Am China




Two lovers, separated by oceans and an oppressive political regime, desperate to find their way back to each other.

In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter: Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet…

In a detention centre in Dover exiled Chinese musician Jian is awaiting an unknown fate. In Beijing his girlfriend Mu sends desperate letters to London to track him down, her last memory of them together a roaring rock concert and Jian the king on stage. Until the state police stormed in.

As Iona unravels the story of these Chinese lovers from their first flirtations at Beijing University to Jian’s march in the Jasmine Revolution, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other while Iona feels more and more alive. Intoxicated by their romance, Iona sets out to bring them back together, but time seems to be running out.

  • Published: 9 April 2015
  • ISBN: 9781473521810
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Length: 11 hr 46 min
  • Narrators: Sarah Lam, Andrew Leung, Karen Bryson
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Xiaolu Guo

Xiaolu Guo was born in south China. She studied at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before moving to London in 2002. Her books include Village of Stone which was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, and I Am China which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, the Jhalak Prize and the Rathbones Folio Award 2018, and was a Sunday Times Book of the Year.

In 2013 Xiaolu was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She has directed several award-winning films including She, A Chinese, and documentaries about China and Britain. She was a judge for the Booker Prize in 2019, and is currently a visiting professor at Columbia University in New York.

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Praise for I Am China

Heart-wrenching… An extraordinary and important book

Charlie Cooper, Independent

Beautifully done

Viv Groskop, Red

I Am China is a moving tale of life and fate, love and loss, that will stay with the reader long after the last page

New Internationalist

Piercingly urgent and revelatory

Independent i

Dark, witty fiction

David Evans, Financial Times

An ambitious, thought-provoking and engaging narrative

Jane Shilling, Evening Standard

Beautifully written… Genuinely affecting… Exceptional

Scotland on Sunday

Cleverly crafted

UK Press Syndication

Beautifully rendered

New York Times