 Cover (publ. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group) | |
| Author | Xiaolu Guo |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Doubleday/Talese |
Publication date | February 2007 |
| Pages | 304 |
| ISBN | 978-0-385-52029-4 |
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers is a novel by Chinese-born British writer Xiaolu Guo, published in 2007 by Doubleday. Guo's first novel written in English, it was shortlisted for the 2007 Women's Prize for Fiction.
A young Chinese woman, Zhuang, arrives in London on a student visa and soon falls in love. Her budding relationship is complicated by her lack of English language skills. The early chapters of the book are narrated in broken English.
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers received mixed reviews.
CBC Books called it "a novel of language and love" and noted that "with sparkling wit, Xiaolu Guo has created an utterly original novel about identity and the cultural divide". [1]
Writing in The Guardian , Carole Cadwalladr criticised the structure of the book, finding the broken English narration unconvincing. [2] However, Cadwalladr praised some elements of the book as funny and appealing. [2] In another Guardian review, Ursula K. Le Guin spoke favourably of Guo's writing style and characters, calling the broken English narrative style "ingenious and risky". [3]
Publishers Weekly said Zhuang had a "unique, evolving voice". [4]
Kirkus Reviews argued that the novel became engaging after "the early chapters' self-conscious winsomeness". [5]
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2007. [6]
Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the Earthsea fantasy series. She was first published in 1959, and her literary career spanned nearly sixty years, producing more than twenty novels and over a hundred short stories, in addition to poetry, literary criticism, translations, and children's books. Frequently described as an author of science fiction, Le Guin has also been called a "major voice in American Letters". Le Guin said she would prefer to be known as an "American novelist".
David Bergen is a Canadian novelist. He has published eleven novels and two collections of short stories since 1993 and is currently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and he was a finalist again in 2010 and 2020, making the long list in 2008.
Roy Aubrey Kelvin Heath was a Guyanese writer who settled in the UK, where he lived for five decades, working as a schoolteacher as well as writing. His 1978 novel The Murderer won the Guardian Fiction Prize. He went on to become more noted for his "Georgetown Trilogy" of novels, consisting of From the Heat of the Day (1979), One Generation (1980), and Genetha (1981), which were also published in an omnibus volume as The Armstrong Trilogy, 1994. Heath said that his writing was "intended to be a dramatic chronicle of twentieth-century Guyana". His work has been described as "marked by comprehensive social observation, penetrating psychological analysis, and vigorous, picaresque action."
Charles William Foran is a Canadian writer in Toronto, Ontario.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Maggie O'Farrell, RSL, is a novelist from Northern Ireland. Her acclaimed first novel, After You'd Gone, won the Betty Trask Award, and a later one, The Hand That First Held Mine, the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She has twice been shortlisted since for the Costa Novel Award: for Instructions for a Heatwave in 2014 and This Must Be The Place in 2017. She appeared in the Waterstones 25 Authors for the Future. Her memoir I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death reached the top of the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her novel Hamnet won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2020, and the fiction prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards. The Marriage Portrait was shortlisted for the 2023 Women's Prize for Fiction.
Xiaolu Guo FRSL is a Chinese-born British novelist, memoirist and film-maker, who explores migration, alienation, memory, personal journeys, feminism, translation and transnational identities.
Carole Jane Cadwalladr is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. She is a features writer for The Observer and formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph. Cadwalladr rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal for which she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside The New York Times reporters.
Lauren Groff is an American novelist and short story writer. She has written five novels and two short story collections, including Fates and Furies (2015), Florida (2018), and Matrix (2022).
Jane Harris is a British writer of fiction and screenplays. Her novels have been published in over 20 territories worldwide and translated into many different languages. Her most recent work is the novel Sugar Money which has been shortlisted for several literary prizes.
Heather Rose is an Australian author born in Hobart, Tasmania. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. She is best known for her novels The Museum of Modern Love, which won the 2017 Stella Prize, and Bruny (2019), which won Best General Fiction in the 2020 Australian Book Industry Awards. She has also worked in advertising, business, and the arts.
Dream of Ding Village is a 2006 novel by the Chinese writer Yan Lianke. The 2011 English translation by Cindy Carter, published in the UK by Grove Press, was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Last Letters from Hav is a Booker Prize-shortlisted 1985 novel by Welsh writer Jan Morris. Last Letters from Hav was republished in 2006 together with Hav of the Myrmidons and an introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin in a collected volume entitled Hav.
The 2019 Booker Prize for Fiction was announced on 14 October 2019. The Booker longlist of 13 books was announced on 23 July, and was narrowed down to a shortlist of six on 3 September. The Prize was awarded jointly to Margaret Atwood for The Testaments and Bernardine Evaristo for Girl, Woman, Other. This was the first time the prize was shared since 1992, despite a rule change banning joint winners.
Once Upon a Time in the East is a memoir by Chinese-born British Xiaolu Guo. The book is titled Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China in the United States.
The Dictionary of Lost Words is the debut novel by Australian writer Pip Williams. It was sixth on the list of Australian fiction bestsellers for 2020 and as of 18 January 2021 it had sold more than 100,000 copies.
Sequoia Nagamatsu is an American novelist, short story writer, and professor.
The Spear Cuts Through Water is a 2022 fantasy novel by Simon Jimenez. The novel contains a frame story about a grandchild listening to stories of the Old Country; it also tells the story of two men who journey across the Old Country with a dying goddess. It is Jimenez's sophomore novel. The novel received critical acclaim, including being shortlisted for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.
The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize, established in 2022, is an annual, English-language literary award presented in honor of Ursula K. Le Guin. The $25,000 prize is awarded to an author for a single work of "imaginative fiction". The award is meant to honor authors who "can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now".
Horse Heaven is a novel by American author Jane Smiley, published in 2000 by Knopf. It was shortlisted for the 2001 Women's Prize for Fiction.