*Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award* *Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award* *Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize* *Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2018* *ASunday TimesBook of the Year*

Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. They are strangers to her.

When she is born in 1973, her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam leaves, they leave Xiaolu with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village on the East China Sea.

Once Upon a Time in the Easttakes Xiaolu from a run-down shack to film school in a rapidly changing Beijing, navigating the everyday peculiarity of modern China: censorship, underground art, Western boyfriends. In 2002 she leaves Beijing on a scholarship to study in Britain. Now, after a decade in Europe, her tale of East to West resonates with the insight that can only come from someone who is both an outsider and at home.

'This generation'sWild Swans'Daily Telegraph

Xiaolu Guowas born in south China. She studied film at the Beijing Film Academy and published six books in China before she moved to London in 2002. Her books includeVillage of Stonewhich was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize,A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Loverswhich was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction,20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youthwhich was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, andI Am Chinawhich was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. In 2013 she was named as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. Xiaolu has also directed several award-winning films includingShe, A Chineseand a documentary about London,Late at Night. She lives in London and Berlin.