Xiaolu

An obsession with language, and how it simultaneously frees and limits thought, has been a consistent thread in Xiaolu Guo’s work since her 2007 debut, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers. Like that book, her marvellous new memoir, Radical, is organised around short chapters with disparate words and phrases as titles. For each one, she gives their etymology and Chinese translation.In Chinese writing, a “radical” is the key component of a character, and Guo’s exploration of what it means to be rooted – to a…

Chinese-British author and film-maker Xiaolu Guo left China two decades ago to live in London. A writer of novels and memoirs, she has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize and won the US National Book Critics Circle award in 2017. Her work explores migration and alienation, as well as memory. Her provocative new title, Radical: A Life of My Own, takes the form of a diary-like dictionary, fusing autobiography with an exploration of language as she describes the personal crisis that ensued when she sought to claim…