20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

'This is urgent, compelling but also delightful writing' Lauren Elkin<BR><BR>In the depths of winter, Xiaolu Guo moves into a tiny dilapidated flat on the Hastings seafront - a room of her own where she can spend time writing, liberated from her domestic responsibilities in London.<BR><BR>She immerses herself in the English landscape and its past and becomes preoccupied by the violence between Normans and Saxons. Filled with profound, beautiful and wry reflections on war, history, migration and belonging My Battle of Hastings is a chronicle of Xiaolu's life in Hastings and a portrait of a dislocated artist seeking to connect with her local environment in the hope of finding a deeper connection to her adoptive nation.<BR><BR>'Magnificent, brutal and poetic' Iain Sinclair<BR><BR>'There is nobody quite like Xiaolu Guo... With My Battle of Hastings, Guo shows us the effort that it takes to truly put down roots in a culture so different from the one she was born into' The Times

'A fragmentary meditation on the nature of love' Guardian<BR><BR>A Chinese woman comes to post-Brexit London to start over - just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch.<BR><BR> Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build their future together.<BR><BR>Playing with language and the cultural differences that our narrator encounters as she settles into her new life, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.

'A smart gender-flipped version of Moby Dick' Daily Telegraph<BR>'A clever and original skewering of a classic' i News<BR>'A brilliantly written reordering of Moby-Dick' Philip Hoare<BR><BR>Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville's Moby Dick from a female perspective - perfect for fans Madeline Miller, Percival Everett and Barbara Kingsolver<BR><BR><BR>In 1843, in a small village on the stormy Kent coast, Ishmaelle is born. She grows up swimming with dolphins and eventually - desperate for a life at sea - she disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.<BR><BR>As the American Civil War breaks out, Ishmaelle boards a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors amidst the bloody male violence of whaling and discovers a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale Moby Dick...<BR><BR>'One of the most valuable writers in the world' Deborah Levy<BR><BR>'Guo has gender-flipped this intimidating text with bravura and style... Call Me Ishmaelle takes us on a courageous journey: it's no aping of a classic, rather a vision of a young woman sailing out to discover not a whale but her own self. And in that, it happily succeeds' Daily Telegraph<BR><BR>'An astonishingly ambitious undertaking . . . you're in the hands of a genuine storyteller' New York Times Book Review

Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville's Moby Dick from a female perspective.<BR><BR>'Brilliantly written... ambitious, brave, strange' Philip Hoare<BR>'A clever and original skewering of a classic' i<BR><BR>1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.<BR><BR>As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest.<BR><BR>Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick. Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.<BR><BR>Perfect for fans Madeline Miller, Percival Everett and Barbara Kingsolver