diff --git a/src/calibre/utils/icu.c b/src/calibre/utils/icu.c
index d556115c45..34649afa3f 100644
--- a/src/calibre/utils/icu.c
+++ b/src/calibre/utils/icu.c
@@ -191,6 +191,9 @@ end:
 // Collator.find {{{
 static PyObject *
 icu_Collator_find(icu_Collator *self, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwargs) {
+#if PY_VERSION_HEX >= 0x03030000 
+#error Not implemented for python >= 3.3
+#endif
     PyObject *a_ = NULL, *b_ = NULL;
     UChar *a = NULL, *b = NULL;
     int32_t asz = 0, bsz = 0, pos = -1, length = -1;
@@ -207,10 +210,16 @@ icu_Collator_find(icu_Collator *self, PyObject *args, PyObject *kwargs) {
     search = usearch_openFromCollator(a, asz, b, bsz, self->collator, NULL, &status);
     if (U_SUCCESS(status)) {
         pos = usearch_first(search, &status);
-        if (pos != USEARCH_DONE) 
+        if (pos != USEARCH_DONE) {
             length = usearch_getMatchedLength(search);
-        else
-            pos = -1;
+#ifdef Py_UNICODE_WIDE
+            // We have to return number of unicode characters since the string
+            // could contain surrogate pairs which are represented as a single
+            // character in python wide builds
+            length = u_countChar32(b + pos, length);
+            pos = u_countChar32(b, pos);
+#endif
+        } else pos = -1;
     }
 end:
     if (search != NULL) usearch_close(search);
diff --git a/src/calibre/utils/icu_test.py b/src/calibre/utils/icu_test.py
index e96397e86a..d6d5f557f4 100644
--- a/src/calibre/utils/icu_test.py
+++ b/src/calibre/utils/icu_test.py
@@ -92,7 +92,8 @@ class TestICU(unittest.TestCase):
     def test_find(self):
         ' Test searching for substrings '
         self.ae((1, 1), icu.find(b'a', b'1ab'))
-        self.ae((1, 2), icu.find('\U0001f431', 'x\U0001f431x'))
+        self.ae((1, 1 if sys.maxunicode >= 0x10ffff else 2), icu.find('\U0001f431', 'x\U0001f431x'))
+        self.ae((1 if sys.maxunicode >= 0x10ffff else 2, 1), icu.find('y', '\U0001f431y'))
         self.ae((0, 4), icu.primary_find('pena', 'peña'))
         for k, v in {u'pèché': u'peche', u'flüße':u'Flusse', u'Štepánek':u'ŠtepaneK'}.iteritems():
             self.ae((1, len(k)), icu.primary_find(v, ' ' + k), 'Failed to find %s in %s' % (v, k))