Justin Wintle

Justin Wintle

Background: Author of "The Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi"

Reading: "A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" by Xiaolu Guo

"It's an extraordinarily amusing novel. It's quite light, and written in diliberately dry English, which is very funny. It touched me because in London I met so many Chinese people who came to London to study English and watched and helped them cope with a different culture. There are so many misunderstandings with the language. This book really captures that. I don't read much fiction, but I just can't put it down. It's very clever and thoughtful. The author finds the English language itself entirely logical -- which is right."