Janklow & Nesbit UK
Article image for Xiaolu Guo shortlisted for RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018

Xiaolu Guo shortlisted for RSL Ondaatje Prize 2018

The RSL Ondaatje Prize, now in its 15th year, is an annual award of ?10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry, best evoking the spirit of a place. Founded in 1820 the Royal Society of Literature is Britain?s national charity for the advancement of literature.

In addition to the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the RSL runs the Encore Award for best second novel of the year, the V. S. Pritchett Short Story Prize, RSL Literature Matters Awards and the RSL Giles St Aubyn Awards for Non-Fiction, as well as regular events, and manages a schools outreach programme.

This year?s judges are Tahmima Anam, Eva Hoffman and Daljit Nagra.

?[Once Upon a Time in the East is] an incredible story of extreme hardship leading to intellectual glory; an event-packed account that?s as much about an undernourished girl?s hunt for food as it is about the mountains and villages of China.? - Daljit Nagra

Xiaolu Guo is a novelist, essayist, screenwriter and filmmaker based in London. Her novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers was shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction, and 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth (2008) was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. In 2013, she was named one of Granta?s ?Best of Young British Novelists?.