Xiaolu Guo

A story of desire, love and language – and the meaning of home – told through conversations between two lovers A Chinese woman comes to London to start a new life, away from her old world. She knew she would be lonely, adrift in the city, but will her new relationship bring her closer to this land she has chosen, will their love give her a home? A Lover’s Discourse is an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations between the two lovers. Playing with language and the cultural differences that her narrator encounters as she settles into life in a post-Brexit Britain, Xiaolu Guo shows us how this couple navigate these differences, and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a stifling flatshare in east London, or journeying through other continents together... Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate and tender novel asks universal questions: what is the meaning of home when we’ve been uprooted? How can a man and woman be together? And how best to find solid ground in a world of uncertainty?

A Lover's Discourse

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“Whatever I spoke, whether it was my borrowed English language or my native Chinese Mandarin, I didn't feel I had that language in me. That language spoke for me, instead of my speaking it. That language had existed before me and would continue after me. And I just wore it like clothes. Then it would abandon me when I die.”

A Lover's Discourse quotes

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