20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

A nihilistic, Generation X-style manifesto… Its impudent, hand-on-hip attitude cannot fail to charm * New Statesman *Funny and melancholy, scintillatingly observed, and has a very big heart * The Times *Both a personal odyssey and an insightful commentary about modern Chinese society and life itself… Xiaolu Guo is an instinctive, humane witness, her atmospheric, unusually physical narratives are alive and attractively insistent, inspired variations on the theme of quest * Irish Times *A pure and bracing blast of universal youth… I loved it. It shines with the utterly blameless, scarily fragile arrogance of youth itself, the absolute certainty that death is better than middle age * Daily Telegraph *A breath of the freshest air imaginable. She cuts through the smog of hype and platitude – Boyd Tonkin * Independent *A feisty and funny rite-of-passage novel…I loved the protagonist, Fenfang, whose strength of personality allows her to blossom amid the crushing anonymity of Beijing * New Statesman *Guo’s prose, combining magic and the matter-of-fact, is a joy to read. – Sue Baker * Publishing News *A poignant and playful coming-of-age story and a love-letter to a Beijing rarely seen by Western readers * Bookseller *Enjoyable, lively and well-presented * Financial Times *

Xiaolu Guo was born in China. She published six books before moving to Britain in 2002. Her books include- Village of Stone, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize; A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, shortlisted for the Orange Prize; and I Am China. Her recent memoir, Once Upon a Time in the East, won the National Book Critics Circle Award, was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award and the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018. It was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her most recent novel A Lover’s Discourse was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2020. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin.

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