'One of the most valuable writers in the world' Deborah Levy Embodiment assimilation
integration - these are big words but they seem to name a stage or a state I ought to be able
to achieve in my brief life. In winter 2021 Xiaolu Guo moved into a tiny dilapidated flat on
the Hastings seafront a room of her own where she could spend time writing away from her
domestic duties as a mother and wife in London. As Russia invaded Ukraine she immersed herself
in the English landscape and its past especially the violence between Normans and Saxons. My
Battle of Hastings is a chronicle of Xiaolu's life in Hastings and a portrait of a dislocated
artist seeking to connect with her local environment in the hope of finding a deeper connection
to her adoptive nation. Filled with profound beautiful and wry reflections on war history
migration and belonging Xiaolu's journey into the past completes the triptych of memoirs that
began with Once Upon a Time in the East charting her childhood in China then continued with
Radical: A Life of My Own in search of a freedom beyond her home. My Battle of Hastings is
above all an exploration of how an immigrant an outsider and a woman can embrace local and
national history.
