I Am China

July 1, 2014
An unusual translation assignment offers a harrowing glimpse into post-Tiananmen repression in China.Iona is a London translator who's been asked to look over a stash of Chinese letters and diary entries that have mysteriously made their way into a publisher's hands. What she uncovers is a mix of dissident rhetoric and heartbreak that turns on one couple's story. Jian, she learns, is a rock musician whose lyrics and writings riled Chinese authorities, who banished him from the country; he eventually lands in England, then heads to France. Mu, his lover, is a musician and poet herself, repurposing Allen Ginsberg's poetry to register her own protest about her homeland, albeit while safely on tour in the United States. Over the course of almost a year, Iona pieces together the history of Mu and Jian's relationship from the mid-1990s to the present. Guo generally restricts the perspective to Iona, a smart strategy in that it dramatizes her slow awakening to the politics and culture that barricaded Mu and Jian from each other. The downside is that she gives Iona little personality; apart from an interest in Chinese language and culture and the occasional one-night stand, her character is largely blank. As the novel deepens, though, the camera shifts more often to Jian's and Mu's points of view, underscoring the emotional turmoil that's hard to register in letters and diaries and even more difficult to translate. There's some stiffness to Guo's prose, and some plot turns are too tidily machined. (There's a needlessly delayed revelation about Jian, for instance, and a melodramatic near-miss between two characters toward the climax.) The strength of the novel is within Mu's and Jian's writings, which come in a variety of forms: brash manifestos, heartsick poetry, coded messages. Though Iona is little more than a bridge between the two, the story she's stumbled over is an affecting one.A semi-epistolary tale powered by what's repressed and unsayable.

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August 1, 2014

London-based Guo's third novel in English (she published six prior in China) opens with a desperate love letter-in-transit "from a place I cannot tell you about yet...when I am safe I will be able to let you know where I am." Over almost 400 pages, North London translator Iona Kirkpatrick, whose facility with foreign words allowed her to escape her confining Scottish island, pieces together the separated lovers' history through letters, diaries, notes, and two photos. Jian, "the Number One Beijing punk star," who insists that "all art is political expression," and his beloved, a young poet named Mu, together survived and matured through a post-Tiananmen new China, and discovering them lays bare Iona's own isolated, constricted existence. VERDICT Guo's latest suffers from uneven narrative sprawl, a cornucopia of too many Very Important Topics (political, cultural, gendered, personal disconnect), predictable plotting (especially regarding bedmates), and unnecessary implausible details (the queen's reply). Readers searching for more effective alternatives should consider Nina Schuyler's The Translator for the mysteries of translation, Xinran's China Witness for personal testimonies of elder Chinese generations, or even Guo's own A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers for adventures of peripatetic 21st-century Chinese youth.--Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

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September 1, 2014
Guo's bittersweet tale of love and politics with a soupon of obsession plays out against the contrast between East and West. Professional translator Iona Kirkpatrick sits alone in her London apartment and struggles to read and translate the scratchy handwriting of Chinese punk-rock musician Kublai Jian. His hastily penned diary entries and letters comprise work she's doing for a publisher interested in telling the postTiananmen Square story of Jian and his girlfriend, Mu. Jian writes with such passion that it is impossible not to be drawn into the drama of his life, love, and political views. When he writes, All art is political expression, it gives one pause, wondering if this is actually Chinese ex-pat author Guo speaking rather than his character. Jian and Mu's words and story are so profoundly compelling it is easy to understand how Iona can become obsessed with learning more, working ever harder, and wanting to make certain their story is published. This is truly a finely crafted novel whose characters will remain in memory long after reading the final page.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)