Savidge Reads Grills… Xiaolu Guo

I always get excited at the prospect of a Savidge Reads Grills as I love getting to know authors better. It makes it even more exciting when its an author that you adore and today I have the pleasure of bringing you an interview with the wonderful Xiaolu Guo. If you havent read any of her work then I cannot recommend them enough, pop to yesterdays post to see how much I enjoyed her latest novel Lovers in the Age of Indifference. Anyway on with the grilling.

Savidge Reads is already a huge fan of your work but for those readers out there who may not have read one of your books how would your describe them and where would you say they should start?
Well, it is no good to do self recommendation I guess, but you know, every book has it’s own reader with its own accidental chance, you may pick a book from me in a corner bookshop, and that is something, we say in chinese – yuan fen, an accidental destiny. I can say that I like some of my novels: A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers, and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth for example…but you cannot say that.  I always prefer the next one which I am writing….
 
Where does the inspiration for your books and your characters come from?
Life, life, and life. other’s life, self life, life’s life. 
 
All your novels tend to have quite kooky female lead characters and yet these women are quite alienated characters too, why is that?
That’s how humans are in this world nowadays….of course, from my point of view. You don’t need to have the same vision like mine.
 
Though some of the contents of your books are quite hard hitting, for example rape in A Concise Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers, or the poverty and future of China in UFO in Her Eyes, there is also a lot of dark and wry humour, is that intentional in your writing?
Not intentional but natual I would say. It is almost unconcious I would say.  Or I can say these stories are so much in my bones, they presented my visions of this world, me and the story are together, there are not much separation in between.
 
Describe your typical writing routine, do you have any writers quirks or any writing rituals?
No. Very casual and sometimes rather painful to sit down to write. My problem as a writer is that I don’t like writing, really don’t like the mear act of writing, it is an act of anti body. I prefer do anything other than writing if I can… 
 
You also make films; do these two occupations work well together? If you had to choose one occupation which would it be?
I like doing films. I don’t think one has to choose one thing. Filmmakings and writings, I like both in a sense that they can provide me very different method via different vision-story, I think film media is great, modern and complicated – that is the charm and power of the visual world when you actually comes from the word-world, the literature world….
 
When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer? Was it an easy thing for you to do?
Very young… my early teenager days. It is not a question of easy or difficult, it is a matter of if one finds the beauty of the literature or not.
 
So what is next for Xiaolu Guo? You have a new book out in January, what are you working on after that?
A short story collection Lovers in the Age of Indifference just came out in english, which is a book I like very much. 17 stories on lovers’ relations. I am now working on – of course, some new ideas….
 
Which books and authors inspired you to write? Who do you love to read at the moment?
Too many, and at different stages some books have different importance to me. For example I used to be very much in love with Duras, Modiano, the french literature from 60s and 70s, lately I loved Boris Vian’s novel The Foam Of Daze, and recently a kind of russian literature, for the similar communist background… Sometimes I prefer to not read english literature just because the fact we are too much living in a english speaking world. But when I was younger I loved beat poets and perhaps I still do.
 
Which other Asian authors would you recommend people MUST run out and buy right now this second, well once they have finished reading this?
That is not my style, I don’t urge people read it is their choices. But I do like chinese writer Zhu Wen, he is very cool, and deep.

A huge thank you to Xiaolu for taking the time to participate in a Savidge Reads Grills you can see more of them with other authors and my Gran here. You can also find out even more about Xiaolu Guo by visiting her website www.guoxiaolu.com