Xiaolu Guo’s Search for a Perfect Home

In March, Chinese-born British author and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo left New York City in a rush. She’d been a visiting professor and writer-in-residence at Columbia University, and, just before the Covid-19 lockdown, she started to get very worried, she explains on a Zoom call from Berlin.

“I thought they were announcing closing borders,” she says. “And I changed my ticket, actually, to leave earlier. I left everything, so the rental flat is still full of clothes. And my office, full of books. Everything’s there”—including some chocolate she remembers leaving on the table. “I thought, Oh I’m just going to be back. Maybe a week or something, you know?”

Months later, home, for Guo, remains in wild, disconcerting flux. In a way, though, she is more prepared than