Yiyun Li Bücher

Peking, Ende der achtziger Jahre: Drei ungleiche Freunde wachsen im gleichen Häuserblock auf. Ruyu, ein streng katholisch erzogenes Waisenmädchen aus der Provinz, und die wohlhabenden, aber vernachlässigten Boyang und Moran. Doch als eine weitere Freundin, Shaoai, vergiftet wird und ins Koma fällt, geht ihre Freundschaft auseinander. Shaoai hatte mit dem Tiananmen-Aufstand sympathisiert, der Vorfall wird nicht geklärt. Boyang macht danach im modernen China als Geschäftsmann Karriere und bleibt doch ähnlich heimatlos wie Ruyu und Moran nach ihrer Emigration in die USA. Als nach zwanzig Jahren die Nachricht vom Tod Shaoais kommt, holt sie alle die verdrängte Vergangenheit wieder ein.

Leben und Sterben in China China, Ende der 1970er-Jahre: In einer Provinzstadt weit weg von Peking soll die junge Gu Shan hingerichtet werden. Ihr Verbrechen: Sie, die während der Kulturrevolution fanatische Rotgardistin war, hat dem Kommunismus abgeschworen. Shans Tod wird weitreichende Konsequenzen haben. Nicht nur für ihre Eltern, sondern auch für die Rundfunksprecherin Kai, die längst an der Partei zweifelt; für die behinderte Nini, die in ihrer Familie wie eine Sklavin gehalten wird, oder für den kleinen Tong, der nur von seinem Hund geliebt wird.

A reader's companion for Tolstoy's epic novel, War and Peace, inspired by the online book club led by Yiyun Li. For the writer Yiyun Li, whenever life has felt uncertain, War and Peace has been the novel she turns to. In March 2020, as the pandemic tightened its grip, Li and A Public Space launched #TolstoyTogether, a War and Peace book club, on Twitter and Instagram, gathering a community (that came to include writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Garth Greenwell, and Carl Phillips) for 85 days of prompts, conversation, succor, and pleasure. It was an experience shaped not only by the time in which they read but also the slow, consistent rhythm of the reading. And the extraordinary community that gathered for a moment each day to discuss Tolstoy, history, and the role of art in a time like this. Tolstoy Together captures that moment, and offers a guided, communal experience for past and new readers, lovers of Russian literature, and all those looking for what Li identifies as "his level-headedness and clear-sightedness offer[ing] a solidity during a time of duress.

The oldest written story on Earth, retold for children

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 "Gold Boy, Emerald Girl," Yiyun Li weaves captivating stories that explore the human condition through the lens of politics and folklore. From complex relationships to a unique investigative agency in Beijing, her lyrical prose paints a vivid landscape of life, blending the strange with the familiar.

'Any new book by Yiyun Li is a cause for celebration' Sigrid Nunez 'One of our finest living authors' New York Times

'A dazzling, subtle, skilful knockout - I loved it' Charlotte Mendelson'One of the great writers of our time' Tash Aw'Wonderfully strange and alive' Jon McGregorA propulsive, seductive new novel about friendship, exploitation and intimacy from the prize-winning author of Where Reasons End

'Days- the easiest possession. The days he had refused would come, one at a time. They would wait, every daybreak, with their boundless patience and indifference, seeing if they could turn me into an ally or an enemy to myself.' A woman's teenage son takes his own life. It is incomprehensible. The woman is a writer, and so she attempts to comprehend her grief in the space she knows best- on the page, as an imagined conversation with the child she has lost. He is as sharp and funny and serious in death as he was in life, and he will speak back to her, unable to offer explanation or solace, but not yet, not quite, gone. Taking the form of a dialogue between mother and son, Where Reasons End is an extraordinary portrait of parenthood, in all its painful contradictions of joy, humour and sorrow, and of what it is to lose a child.

Yiyun Li's searing personal story of hospitalizations for depression and thoughts of suicide is interlaced with reflections on the solace and affirmations of life and personhood that Li found in reading the journals, diaries, and fiction of other writers. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Kierkegaard and Larkin, Yiyun Li traces the themes that have preoccupied these writers and herself: time and transformation, presence and absence, the impulse to abandon life and the impulse to carry on. Drawing on personal experiences - her unstable mother, her time in the Chinese army - she constructs a beautiful, interior exploration of selfhood and what is required to choose life.