From AwardAnnals
| Book: | A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers: A Novel |
|---|
| Author: | Xiaolu Guo |
|---|
| Honors: |
|
|---|
| Genres: | |
|---|
| Publisher: | Chatto & Windus |
|---|
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 when she arrives at Heathrow she’s no better at their language. Set loose to find her way through a confusion of cultural gaffes and grammatical mishaps, she meets a 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.
Written in steadily improving English grammar and vocabulary, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary For Lovers is funny, romantic, and touching, and gives us a sparkling new lens through which we can view ourselves.
