I Am China - Softcover

Guo, Xiaolu

3.71

1,044 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804170479 ISBN 13: 9780804170475

Publisher: Anchor Books, 2015

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An NPR Best Book of the Year London translator Iona Kirkpatrick is at work on a new project: a collection of letters and diaries by a Chinese punk guitarist named Kublai Jian. As she translates the handwritten pages, a story of romance and revolution emerges between Jian, who believes there is no art without political commitment, and Mu, a poet whom he loves as fiercely as his ideals. Iona cannot know that Jian has come to Britain seeking political asylum and is mere miles away in Dover, awaiting news of his fate. Mu is in Beijing, writing letters to London, feverishly trying to track Jian down. As Iona charts the course of their twenty-year relationship from its beginnings at Beijing University to Jian s defiant march in the Jasmine Revolution, her empty life takes on an urgent purpose: to bring Jian and Mu together again before it s too late."

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Review:

"Beautifully rendered." --The New York Times Book Review

"A book so piercingly urgent and relevant it is as if Guo has not so much published it as pressed it into your hand the very moment after writing the final sentence." --The Independent (London)

"A multilayered exploration of politics and culture across three continents. . . . Cultural references, from Johnny Rotten to Erik Satie, are refracted through a lens of Chinese politics." --The Guardian (London)

"[Guo's] dark, witty fiction examines the interface between east and west. . . . This novel has bold, refreshing things to say about art and politics." --Financial Times

"A complex and fascinating political narrative. The lives of Jian and Mu, haunted by the turbulent history of Chinese politics (in particular, the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989), read like a eulogy for a lost vision of China." --The Observer (London)

"Steeped in music, revolution, exile and romance, this is a story from the front lines of contemporary China." --Houston Chronicle

"With I Am China, Xiaolu Guo has completed her metamorphosis from an exile writing about displacement in a second language to a writer who seems to occupy two worlds at once, with a discerning eye cast on each and the myriad intersections between them." --The Toronto Star

"A compelling read. . . . Vividly captures the mixed emotions of the youths of 1980s about their home country and the impact on their lives decades after." --The Asian Review of Books

"A harrowing glimpse into post-Tiananmen repression in China. . . . A mix of dissident rhetoric and heartbreak that turns on one couple's story." --Kirkus Reviews

"Guo's bittersweet tale of love and politics with a soup�on of obsession plays out against the contrast between East and West. . . . This is truly a finely crafted novel whose characters will remain in memory long after reading the final page." --Booklist

Book Description:

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

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