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Start giftingA Lover's Discourse
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Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“An episodic novel about two lovers, their growing affair, and the conversations that ultimately end in discourse. Reflecting on language & cultural differences, this story is beautiful, witty, and perceptive. If you enjoy people-watching, you will love eavesdropping on this couple's messy relationship.”
— Courtney • Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers
Bookseller recommendation
“An episodic novel about two lovers, their growing affair, and the conversations that ultimately end in discourse. Reflecting on language & cultural differences, this story is beautiful, witty, and perceptive. If you enjoy people-watching, you will love eavesdropping on this couple's messy relationship.”
— Courtney • Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers
"I don't believe in love at first sight."
I was taken aback. I thought we were definitely in love at first sight.
"What do you mean? Wasn't it clear the moment you picked the elderflowers by the park and we looked at each other? Or was it in that book club?"
You gave me a damp smile, as if my confusion proved that you were right.
A Chinese woman moves from Beijing to London for a doctoral program—and to begin a new life—just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch. Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build a life together.
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 post-Brexit vote Britain, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped and stifling apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humor, this intimate and tender novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.
Xiaolu Guo is the author of Village of Stone, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, I Am China, A Lover's Discourse, and Nine Continents. She has been named one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Guo is also an award-winning director; her films include She, a Chinese and UFO in Her Eyes, and she has been featured in retrospectives around the world. She lives in London and Berlin.
Cindy Kay is a Chinese-Thai-American narrator and educator who grew up in the California Bay Area and lives in the Rockies. Her work has been described as listening to a "cozy best friend." She narrates fiction and nonfiction, and has studied Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, and Japanese.