Nine Continents : A Memoir in and out of China by Xiaolu Guo (2017, Hardcover)

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Nine Continents: A Memoir in and Out of China by Guo, Xiaolu Pages are clean and are not marred by notes or folds of any kind. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less

About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherGROVE/Atlantic, Incorporated
ISBN-100802127134
ISBN-139780802127136
eBay Product ID (ePID)234084581

Product Key Features

Book TitleNine Continents : a Memoir in and Out of China
Number of Pages366 Pages
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year2017
TopicWomen, Personal Memoirs, Women's Studies, Literary, Asia / China, Customs & Traditions
IllustratorYes
GenreSocial Science, Biography & Autobiography, History
AuthorXiaolu Guo
FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.2 in
Item Weight18 Oz
Item Length8.2 in
Item Width5.5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN2017-032639
ReviewsPraise for Nine Continents : Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award "Vivid--and funny . . . [Xiaolu Guo] has done far more than simply 'survive' the hardships and dislocations of her life. She has triumphed . . . Nine Continents shows the rewards of listening to an unleashed voice remembering and speaking with full freedom." -- Wall Street Journal "It is the journey through heady, whiplash times that helps us understand where the nation is going . . . Perhaps [her elegy] for vanished homes in China required distance to write. . . A laojia [old home] exists not so much on a map but in the heart." -- The New York Times "Guo is a bolder, angrier and more ambitious figure than her forebears . . . A subtle achievement of language . . . [with] a wry, matter-of-fact, bittersweet tone that accommodates the pathos and cruelty of her story without lapsing into self-pity."-- The Times (UK) "This is autobiography as Bildungsroman or indeed as Künstlerroman . . . Aside from the fast-paced plot, this is most interesting for its probing portrayal of Guo's ambivalent relationship with her homeland . . . Moving and often exhilarating." -- Financial Times (UK) "The most compelling Chinese memoir since Jung Chang's Wild Swans . . . Guo's writing is more personal and poetic than Chang's crisp, scholarly prose--and more openly angry . . . She's refreshingly fierce and funny about the flaws she finds in British culture." -- Telegraph (UK) (5 stars) "By turns raw, intelligent, compelling, sad, uncompromising and reticent . . . Guo's talent is to highlight all those things about China that make it so different while simultaneously making it somehow seem both familiar and comprehensible." -- South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) "Guo is . . . rebellious, flamboyant and fundamentally optimistic . . . Some of Guo's narratives of herself are staggering . . . Fascinating." -- Scotland on Sunday (UK) "This autobiography is her account of fiery, artistic defiance and a testament to the act of storytelling . . . Guo writes in the audacious, restless and fragmented prose that has become her imprint: a feverish style that can be as merciless as the world she portrays . . . [A] penetrating writer." -- New Statesman (UK), Praise for Nine Continents : "Vivid--and funny . . . [Xiaolu Guo] has done far more than simply 'survive' the hardships and dislocations of her life. She has triumphed . . . Nine Continents shows the rewards of listening to an unleashed voice remembering and speaking with full freedom." -- Wall Street Journal "It is the journey through heady, whiplash times that helps us understand where the nation is going . . . Perhaps [her elegy] for vanished homes in China required distance to write. . . A laojia [old home] exists not so much on a map but in the heart." -- The New York Times "Guo is a bolder, angrier and more ambitious figure than her forebears . . . A subtle achievement of language . . . [with] a wry, matter-of-fact, bittersweet tone that accommodates the pathos and cruelty of her story without lapsing into self-pity."-- The Times (UK) "This is autobiography as Bildungsroman or indeed as Künstlerroman . . . Aside from the fast-paced plot, this is most interesting for its probing portrayal of Guo's ambivalent relationship with her homeland . . . Moving and often exhilarating." -- Financial Times (UK) "The most compelling Chinese memoir since Jung Chang's Wild Swans . . . Guo's writing is more personal and poetic than Chang's crisp, scholarly prose--and more openly angry . . . She's refreshingly fierce and funny about the flaws she finds in British culture." -- Telegraph (UK) (5 stars) "By turns raw, intelligent, compelling, sad, uncompromising and reticent . . . Guo's talent is to highlight all those things about China that make it so different while simultaneously making it somehow seem both familiar and comprehensible." -- South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) "Guo is . . . rebellious, flamboyant and fundamentally optimistic . . . Some of Guo's narratives of herself are staggering . . . Fascinating." -- Scotland on Sunday (UK) "This autobiography is her account of fiery, artistic defiance and a testament to the act of storytelling . . . Guo writes in the audacious, restless and fragmented prose that has become her imprint: a feverish style that can be as merciless as the world she portrays . . . [A] penetrating writer." -- New Statesman (UK)
SynopsisFrom one of Granta 's Best of Young British Novelists, Xiaolu Guo's memoir documents her trajectory from a small fishing village in rural China to life in the West as a fearless writer and filmmaker., Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography Xiaolu Guo is one of the most acclaimed Chinese-born writers of her generation, an iconoclastic and completely contemporary voice. Her vivid, poignant memoir, Nine Continents is the story of a curious mind coming of age in an inhospitable country, and her determination to seek a life beyond the limits of its borders. Xiaolu Guo has traveled further than most to become who she needed to be. Now, as she experiences the birth of her daughter in a London maternity ward surrounded by women from all over the world, she looks back on that journey. It begins in the fishing village shack on the East China Sea where her illiterate grandparents raised her, and brings her to a rapidly changing Beijing, full of contradictions: a thriving underground art scene amid mass censorship, curious Westerners who held out affection only to disappear back home. Eventually Xiaolu determined to see the world beyond China for herself, and now, after fifteen years in Europe, her words resonate with the insight of someone both an outsider and at home, in a world far beyond the country of her birth. Nine Continents presents a fascinating portrait of China in the eighties and nineties, how the Cultural Revolution shaped families, and how the country's economic ambitions gave rise to great change. It is also a moving testament to the birth of a creative spirit, and of a new generation being raised to become citizens of the world. It confirms Xiaolu Guo as one of world literature's most urgent voices.
LC Classification NumberPR9450.9.G86Z46

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