Language and love collide in this inventive novel of a young Chinese woman's journey to the West and her attempts to understand the language, and the man, she adores.Zhuang – or “Z,” to tongue-tied foreigners – has come to London to study English, but finds herself adrift, trapped in a cycle of cultural gaffes and grammatical mishaps. Then she meets an Englishman who changes everything, leading her into a world of self-discovery. She soon realizes that, in the West, “love” does not always mean the same as in China, and that you can learn all the words in the English language and still not understand your lover. And as the novel progresses with steadily improving grammar and vocabulary, Z's evolving voice makes her quest for comprehension all the more poignant. With sparkling wit, Xiaolu Guo has created an utterly original novel about identity and the cultural divide.

郭小櫓，1973年生於浙江溫嶺石塘鎮漁村，18歲就讀北京電影學院，獲學士及碩士學位，寫劇本，做電影導演，發錶小說和影評，齣版有文集《電影地圖》、《電影理論筆記》，小說《芬芳的37°2》、《我心中的石頭鎮》和電影劇本《我媽媽的男朋友是誰》等。2002年起旅居英國，至今拍瞭六部長短片，包括紀錄北京申奧期間的《嵌入肉體的城市》，獲法國巴黎“國際人權影展”大奬、描寫城鄉及歸鄉情結的《今天的魚怎麼樣？》，獲2007年法國 Créteil“國際女性影展”評審團大奬，以及藉由雙親的東西行旅透視文化衝突的新片《西行之路》等。