China: Xiaolu Guo: Far East to East End

Xiaolu Guo, the Chinese novelist and film-maker, has crossed not only continents but languages. Boyd Tonkin catches up with an intrepid traveller in Hackney: The Independent

Xiaolu Guo, the prolific Chinese novelist and film-maker improbably settled in a deck-access council block in east London, is upset about a recent attempt at literary censorship. A publisher’s editor advised her to remove a pivotal chapter about an abortion from her new novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Chatto & Windus, £12.99). An editor in Beijing? No, in New York. “It’ll become like chick-lit, and I hate that word,” she fumes. “I’m really angry and worried.”