郭小橹

choi

Literary retelling | I grapple with Thee. The Economist, Apr 19, 2025, at page 71
(book review on Xiaolu Guo, Call Me Ishmaelle. Chatto & Windus, 2025)

Note:
(a) I am not interested in literature and have not heard of her. Maybe you have?
(b) "XIAOLU GUO [郭小橹 (1973- )] has always been interested in people who leave. 'A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers,' her [first English] novel published in 2007, follows a Chinese woman studying in London. The protagonist in '20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth'pher second novel in English]  (2008) forsakes her sleepy home in rural China for Beijing * * * Along with Yiyun Li [李翊云 (1972- ; female)], Ha Jin [哈金, pen name of 金雪飞 (1956- )] and Gao Xingjian, Ms Guo is part of a cohort of celebrated writers of the Chinese diaspora who explore the experiences of émigrés. In 'Once Upon A Time in the East,' an acclaimed memoir published in 2017 [in English], Ms Guo wrote about growing up in a fishing village in Zhejiang [浙江省台州市温岭市石塘镇] in eastern China * * * In her telling, however, Ms Guo toys with Manichaean ideas, not least through her cross-dressing heroine."
(i) Manichaean
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Manichaean
, where ch is pronounced due to its Greek origin.
(ii) Mani (prophet)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mani_(prophet)
(founder of Manichaeism)
(c) Ishmael (Moby-Dick)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael_(Moby-Dick)
was white.