When Xiaolu Guo is born in 1973, her parents hand her over to a childless peasant couple in the mountains. Aged two, and suffering from malnutrition on a diet of yam leaves, they leave her with her illiterate grandparents in a fishing village on the East China Sea. Xiaolu Guo meets her parents for the first time when she is almost seven. They are strangers to her. Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2017.