My Battle of Hastings

This is a beautiful, witty meditation on cultural cross-pollination on the English coast, and the meaning of home and history for a wandering artist * Alice Albinia, author of The Britannias * Xiaolu Guo is currently one of the finest stylists writing in English. She is also one of the most insightful analysts of Englishness. This book’s curiosity about the history, geography and everyday life of Hastings, and its intimate, often melancholic confessions about living there as an outsider, make it both a haunting contribution to debates about the state of the nation and a moving, intensely personal account of acquiring a sense of place. * Matthew Beaumont * 'Magnificent, brutal and poetic' * Iain Sinclair * 'As sharp and fresh as the wild garlic the author forages. A book to share and savour, bright and brilliant against the grey, grim post-Brexit, xenophobic times within and against which Guo writes.' * So Mayer * 'With the eye of a filmmaker and the soul of a poet, Xiaolu transforms every experience into something thrilling and unique. It never ceases to amaze me how beautifully and imaginatively she organises the world around her, the collisions between cultures, between the inner life and outer, into her own philosophical quest. One of the most alchemical writers of our time.' * Chloe Aridjis *