Twenty Fragments of a Ravenous Youth

The latest novel from Orange Prize finalist Xiaolu Guo is the enchantingly comic story of a young Chinese woman's life as a film extra in hyper-modern, tumultuous Beijing.Though twenty-one-year-old Fenfang Wang has traveled 1,800 miles to seek her fortune in urban Beijing, she is ill-prepared for what greets her: a Communist regime that has outworn its welcome, a city in slap-dash development, and a sexist attitude more in keeping with her peasant upbringing than the country's progressive capita