A Lovers Discourse, Xiaolu Guo
A Lovers Discourse, Xiaolu Guo
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A Lover's Discourse

Author: Xiaolu Guo

Narrator: Cindy Kay

Unabridged: 5 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/06/2020


Synopsis

"I don't believe in love at first sight."

I was taken aback. I thought we were definitely in love at first sight.

"What do you mean? Wasn't it clear the moment you picked the elderflowers by the park and we looked at each other? Or was it in that book club?"

You gave me a damp smile, as if my confusion proved that you were right.

A Chinese woman moves from Beijing to London for a doctoral program—and to begin a new life—just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch. Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build a life together.

A Lover's Discourse is an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations between the two lovers. Playing with language and the cultural differences that her narrator encounters as she settles into life in post-Brexit vote Britain, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped and stifling apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humor, this intimate and tender novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.

About Xiaolu Guo

Xiaolu Guo is the author of Village of Stone, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, I Am China, A Lover's Discourse, and Nine Continents. She has been named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Guo is also an award-winning director; her films include She, a Chinese and UFO in Her Eyes, and she has been featured in retrospectives around the world. She lives in London and Berlin.


Reviews

Now shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith Prize. The idea was that slavery was at the heart of a capitalistic system where reproduction was the main engine. All the things I wrote about originality were kind of beside the point. Originality is a fetish of people who want to control the art market and......more

| | blog | tumblr | ko-fi | | On paper A Lover's Discourse is the type of book that I generally like: we have an unmanned who recounts her relationship to her unmanned 'lover'—a man she addresses as 'you'. Our narrator met 'you' after moving from China to Britain in 2016. Recently orphaned and feel......more

Goodreads review by Jessica

A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo is a very unique novel. A Lover’s Discourse is about a Chinese woman and her relationship with a German man in Brexit Britain. It is an interesting book from a woman’s perspective. The book is composed of little stories of the couple. I found the book very interesti......more