LITFEST: The Lancaster International Fiction Lecture: Xiaolu Guo

Xiaolu Guo: Fiction as an Act of Sabotage

In conversation with Derek Hird

Litfest is delighted that the 5th Lancaster International Fiction Lecture, a joint venture with the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Lancaster University, will be given by British-Chinese writer and fiulm-maker Xiaolu Guo. 

Xiaolu wrote her first books in Mandarin, but when she moved to the UK to study film in 2002 she began writing in English. 

Of her first English novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Ursula Le Guin wrote in the Guardian: ‘It succeeds in luring the western reader into an alien way of thinking: a trick only novels can pull off, and indeed one of their finest tricks.’ Since then Xiaolu’s books and films have attracted many awards and wide, admiring attention.

In her provocative, playful and entertaining lecture she asks the question: ‘How can someone who spent 30 years writing in pictograms and ideograms and who inherited eastern philosophies, enter an alphabetic language and take on Western narratives?’

The event will be followed by a book-signing.

Xiaolu Guo was born in China. Her books include A Lovers Discourse and Once Upon a Time in the East. Her many films include the documentary We Went to Wonderland and the feature film, UFO in Her Eyes. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a visiting professor at the Free University in Berlin. 

Derek Hird is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Lancaster University.

Photo credits: Photo of Xialou Guo by Philip Goulden