A Thousand Years of Good Prayers - Softcover

Li, Yiyun

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0007196636 ISBN 13: 9780007196630

Publisher: HarperPerennial, 2006

Synopsis

Brilliant and original, ‘A Thousand Years of Good Prayers’ introduces a remarkable first collection of stories about China from an author set to become a major literary talent.In this extraordinary first collection, Yiyun Li brings us a modern China facing up to a complex history of repression and guilt. In ''Immortality'', winner of the Paris Review prize, a young man bears a striking resemblance to the dictator, and so finds a strange kind of calling. In ''Extra'', first published in the New Yorker, a Chinese woman, alone in middle age, befriends a young boy who has become an outcast in a remote country school. In their friendship, we see how love can begin to overcome the strictures that dominate their lives.In turn horrifying and breathtakingly lyrical, Yiyun Li, a new and talented young Chinese writer, confronts the silence that dominated the history of her country, and illuminates how mythology, politics, history and culture intersect with personality. She leaves us with an enduring vision of a country undergoing tremendous change.

About this title

About the Author

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and Guardian First Book Award. Her novel, The Vagrants, was shortlisted for Dublin IMPAC Award. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons.

Review

"Yiyun Li is a true storyteller. Great stories offer us the details of life on the riverbanks: birth, family, dinner, and love, all framing the powerful flow of terror, death, political change, the river itself. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is as grand an epic and as tenderly private as a reader could wish."
-Amy Bloom, author of "Come to Me"
"With great tenderness, tact, and humor, these stories open a world that is culturally remote from us, and at the same time as humanly intimate as if its people were our own family and their thoughts the thoughts that lie nearest our own hearts."
-Marilynne Robinson, author of "Gilead" and "Housekeeping"
"This extraordinary collection reminds you just how big a short story can be. With wit, ruthlessness, and an understanding of human nature-its grand follies, private sorrows, and petty dreams-A Thousand Years of Good Prayers may remind you of Flannery O'Connor, though Li is an original. Read this book and marvel at a writer both at the height of her powers and at the start of a brilliant career."
-Elizabeth McCracken, author of "The Giant's House"

"From the Hardcover edition."

" Yiyun Li is a true storyteller. Great stories offer us the details of life on the riverbanks: birth, family, dinner, and love, all framing the powerful flow of terror, death, political change, the river itself. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is as grand an epic and as tenderly private as a reader could wish."
- Amy Bloom, author of "Come to Me"
" With great tenderness, tact, and humor, these stories open a world that is culturally remote from us, and at the same time as humanly intimate as if its people were our own family and their thoughts the thoughts that lie nearest our own hearts."
- Marilynne Robinson, author of "Gilead" and "Housekeeping"
" This extraordinary collection reminds you just how big a short story can be. With wit, ruthlessness, and an understanding of human nature- its grand follies, private sorrows, and petty dreams- A Thousand Years of Good Prayers may remind you of Flannery O' Connor, though Li is an original. Read this book and marvel at a writer both at the height of her powers and at the start of a brilliant career."
- Elizabeth McCracken, author of "The Giant's House"

"From the Hardcover edition."

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperPerennial
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0007196636
• ISBN 13: 9780007196630
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 254