‘This is urgent, compelling but also delightful writing’ Lauren Elkin
In the depths of winter, Xiaolu Guo moves into a tiny dilapidated flat on the Hastings seafront – a room of her own where she can spend time writing, liberated from her domestic responsibilities in London.
She immerses herself in the English landscape and its past and becomes preoccupied by the violence between Normans and Saxons. Filled with profound, beautiful and wry reflections on war, history, migration and belonging My Battle of Hastings is a chronicle of Xiaolu’s life in Hastings and a portrait of a dislocated artist seeking to connect with her local environment in the hope of finding a deeper connection to her adoptive nation.
'Magnificent, brutal and poetic' Iain Sinclair
‘There is nobody quite like Xiaolu Guo… With My Battle of Hastings, Guo shows us the effort that it takes to truly put down roots in a culture so different from the one she was born into’ The Times
The new memoir from prize-winning writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo - playful, provocative and original, it's her deeply personal take on striving for a life of her own
'When it comes to spinning light and shadow on the complexities of living, loving and language, Xiaolu Guo is one of the most valuable writers in the world' DEBORAH LEVY
The world can seem strange and lonely when you step away from your family and everything you have tried to call your own. Yet beauty may also appear. In the autumn of 2019 Xiaolu travelled to New York to take up her position as a visiting professor for a year, leaving her child and partner behind in London. The encounter with American culture and people threatens her sense of identity and throws her into a crisis - of meaning, desire, obligation and selfhood.
This is a memoir about separation - by continents, by language, and from people. It's about being an outsider and the desperate longing to connect. Xiaolu uses her exploration of language (one of the meanings of the word 'radical' is the graphic component, or root, of Chinese characters), and her own life, to create this unique text. At once a memoir, a dictionary, and an ardent love letter, it is an expression of her fascination with Western culture and her nostalgia for Eastern landscapes, and an attempt to describe the space in between. An archive of an artist's search for creative freedom, it is above all else an intimate account of her efforts to carve out a life of her own.
'Radical in angle of attack, smart and brave' IAIN SINCLAIR, author of The Gold Machine
Dla młodziutkiej Chinki Zhuang studia w angielskiej szkole językowej to prawdziwa szansa życiowa. Ale dziewczyna nie potrafi odnaleźć się w europejskiej metropolii, w świecie obcej kultury i niepojętych zachowań. Zhuang potrzebuje przewodnika, który objaśniłby jej ten labirynt znaczeń. Tłumaczem nieznanego staje się poznany przypadkowo w kinie starszy o 20 lat artysta rzeźbiarz, który wiedzie życie pośród londyńskiej cyganerii. Przeżył już młodzieńczy bunt teraz tworzy z potrzeby serca. Spotkanie tych dwojga da początek dziwnemu związkowi, w którym on jest nauczycielem, a ona wdzięczną uczennicą. Mężczyzna otwiera przed nią zupełnie nowy świat - świat seksu, wolności, odkrywania samej siebie. Czy miłość Pigmaliona i jego muzy ma szansę na spełnienie? Zhuang przekona się, że słowo "miłość" nie zawsze znaczy to samo po angielsku, co po chińsku. Aby zrozumieć mężczyznę dobra znajomość jego języka nie wystarczy...
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