Iona is a young woman from the Scottish islands, working in London as a translator. She is sent a parcel of letters and diaries written in Chinese, with a brief to translate then and try to turn them into a book.

The letters turn out to be between two Chinese activists caught up in the youth protests in Tianenmen Square, and the aftermath. Jian is a punk musician from the city, and Mu is a poet from the countryside. Iona strives to untangle their story and find out what happened to them.

It took me a while to get into this book. I didn't particularly warm to Iona as a character, and the plot revelations around Jian and Mu are very slow in coming, so the first half of the book did not engage me much. Once Guo gets going and moves Jian's story to the foreground things get more interesting and, in the end, this book is a worthwhile read. ( )

I Am China is an ambitious book about an important topic. But it never really came together for me. Xiaolu Guo has so many ideas that they never really coalesce. She wants to talk about identity, and politics, and revolution, and language, and isolation, and love, and sex, and human connection. In the end, I felt she was only partly successful. I would rather read a novel that successfully tackles one or two of these ideas than one at which the author seems to have thrown every thought she’s ever had in hopes something will stick. That’s maybe a bit harsher than it should be; I do think that Guo says some interesting things about the human cost of political resistance. (And I found it particularly interesting since I’d just finished Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, which gave me a different perspective on life in post-Tiananmen China.) I just felt that the novel could have been more powerful if Guo had brought more focus to it. ( )

Again one of the countless books that wants to spread the propagandistic and racist idea that everything about the United States is the best possible and everything related to China is shit and inferior. And it is really a pity because it makes almost unreadable a novel which, at least in the first part, is quite intriguing (in spite of beein unrealistic). ( )

I Am China is an ambitious book about an important topic. But it never really came together for me. Xiaolu Guo has so many ideas that they never really coalesce. She wants to talk about identity, and politics, and revolution, and language, and isolation, and love, and sex, and human connection. In the end, I felt she was only partly successful. I would rather read a novel that successfully tackles one or two of these ideas than one at which the author seems to have thrown every thought she’s ever had in hopes something will stick. That’s maybe a bit harsher than it should be; I do think that Guo says some interesting things about the human cost of political resistance. (And I found it particularly interesting since I’d just finished Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, which gave me a different perspective on life in post-Tiananmen China.) I just felt that the novel could have been more powerful if Guo had brought more focus to it. ( )

First of all, let me say that this is a beautiful cover.

Second of all, let me say that I didn't pick it up because of the cover. I picked it up because I read Guo's UFO in Her Eyes earlier this year and loved it. And if I loved that book, I adored this one even more.

The premise really intrigued me. A young Scottish translator reading a jumble of letters and diary entries between two lovers -- Mu and Jian. I love the structure of this novel, the translator (Iona) picks up a page and starts to translate and gets completely absorbed in the story. All throughout the book I had questions. I was hungry to read this book, hungry for the answers.

I love Guo's writing style. She's witty and hopeful and a little bit of a romantic and a cynic all at once. This book is steeped in politics but it isn't dry, for even a minute. I love that this book explores identity and immigrants and migrants and everything in between.

I loved Iona's backstory and how Xiaolu wrote her story like a dealer laying out her cards. This is an incredible feat of a novel and I feel like I was so invested in it, in the story within the story, from the very beginning. I loved that some parts and some words were untranslatable. I loved that this book had so many little pictures and photographs of Jian's writing -- that of an angry, drunken calligrapher.

I loved the massive plot points and the tiny details, all slowly unfurling like a blooming tea ball, petals uncurling and to reveal a red centre.

I read this book's acknowledgements. I didn't want it to end.

Thank you, Xiaolu Guo. This book will stay with me for a long time. ( )