I Am China

By: Xiaolu Guo

Narrated by: Andrew Leung, Karen Bryson, Sarah Lam

In a flat above a noisy north London market, translator Iona Kirkpatrick starts work on a Chinese letter: Dearest Mu, The sun is piercing, old bastard sky. I am feeling empty and bare. Nothing is in my soul, apart from the image of you. I am writing to you from a place I cannot tell you about yet…

In a detention centre in Dover exiled Chinese musician Jian is awaiting an unknown fate. In Beijing his girlfriend Mu sends desperate letters to London to track him down, her last memory of them together a roaring rock concert and Jian the king on stage. Until the state police stormed in.

As Iona unravels the story of these Chinese lovers from their first flirtations at Beijing University to Jian’s march in the Jasmine Revolution, Jian and Mu seem to be travelling further and further away from each other while Iona feels more and more alive. Intoxicated by their romance, Iona sets out to bring them back together, but time seems to be running out.

Critic reviews

Heart-wrenching… An extraordinary and important book (Charlie Cooper)

Beautifully written… Genuinely affecting… Exceptional

An ambitious, thought-provoking and engaging narrative (Jane Shilling)

Beautifully rendered

Beautifully done (Viv Groskop)

Piercingly urgent and revelatory

I Am China is a moving tale of life and fate, love and loss, that will stay with the reader long after the last page

Dark, witty fiction (David Evans)

Cleverly crafted