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A charming and clever account of one woman's exploration of love, language and identity.

Twenty-three-year-old Zhuang (or Z as she calls herself) arrives in London to spend a year learning English. Struggling to find her way in the city, and through the puzzles of tense, verb and adverb; she falls for an older Englishman and begins to realise that the landscape of love is an even trickier terrain...

VINTAGE VOYAGES: A world of journeys, from the tallest mountains to the depths of the mind Written in deliberately bad English, this is a wonderful comic romance -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * Xiaolu is a fabulous writer, fresh, witty and intelligent. She handles language in an astonishing way. I don't think I have enjoyed a book as much in the last twelve months and I am looking forward to hearing a lot more from this promising young voice. * Joanne Harris * A delicate combination of unwitting humour, sadness, sex and displacement. Unputdownable. * Katie Fforde * Her characterisation of Z's lover is subtle and profound... This novel will be compared with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, but it is so much better than that. Guo uses her minimalist, messed-up prose not just to tell an affecting coming-of-age story, but to ask deep questions about the real differences between Chinese and British culture and language. -- Scarlett Thomas * Independent on Sunday * An auspicious English language debut...its young heroine adrift in a London whose people and customs prove as full of pitfalls as the tongue she struggles to master. -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent, Christmas books special *

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers: (Vintage Voyages)