Praise for Nine Continents:

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography

Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize

Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award

"Vivid--and funny . . . [Xiaolu Guo] has done far more than simply 'survive' the hardships and dislocations of her life. She has triumphed . . . Nine Continents shows the rewards of listening to an unleashed voice remembering and speaking with full freedom." --Wall Street Journal

"It is the journey through heady, whiplash times that helps us understand where the nation is going . . . Perhaps [her elegy] for vanished homes in China required distance to write. . . A laojia [old home] exists not so much on a map but in the heart." --The New York Times

"Guo is a bolder, angrier and more ambitious figure than her forebears . . . A subtle achievement of language . . . [with] a wry, matter-of-fact, bittersweet tone that accommodates the pathos and cruelty of her story without lapsing into self-pity."-- The Times (UK)

"This is autobiography as Bildungsroman or indeed as Künstlerroman . . . Aside from the fast-paced plot, this is most interesting for its probing portrayal of Guo's ambivalent relationship with her homeland . . . Moving and often exhilarating." --Financial Times (UK)

"The most compelling Chinese memoir since Jung Chang's Wild Swans . . . Guo's writing is more personal and poetic than Chang's crisp, scholarly prose--and more openly angry . . . She's refreshingly fierce and funny about the flaws she finds in British culture." --Telegraph (UK) (5 stars)

"By turns raw, intelligent, compelling, sad, uncompromising and reticent . . . Guo's talent is to highlight all those things about China that make it so different while simultaneously making it somehow seem both familiar and comprehensible." --South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

"Guo is . . . rebellious, flamboyant and fundamentally optimistic . . . Some of Guo's narratives of herself are staggering . . . Fascinating." --Scotland on Sunday (UK)

"This autobiography is her account of fiery, artistic defiance and a testament to the act of storytelling . . . Guo writes in the audacious, restless and fragmented prose that has become her imprint: a feverish style that can be as merciless as the world she portrays . . . [A] penetrating writer." --New Statesman (UK)