Purchase

Amazon

Add to Wish List

Also by Yiyun Li:

Wednesday's Child, September 2023
Hardcover / e-Book
The Book of Goose, August 2023
Trade Paperback / e-Book (reprint)
The Book of Goose, September 2022
Hardcover / e-Book
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, October 2011
Paperback / e-Book
The Vagrants, February 2009
Hardcover
A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, September 2005
Hardcover

A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS
By: Yiyun Li

These and other daring stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer.

Random House
September 2005
224 pages
ISBN: 1400063124
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Contemporary

Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing, to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose.

“Immortality,” winner of The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for new writers, tells the story of a young man who bears a striking resemblance to a dictator and so finds a calling to immortality. In “The Princess of Nebraska,” a man and a woman who were both in love with a young actor in China meet again in America and try to reconcile the lost love with their new lives.

“After a Life” illuminates the vagaries of marriage, parenthood, and gender, unfolding the story of a couple who keep a daughter hidden from the world. And in “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” in which a man visits America for the first time to see his recently divorced daughter, only to discover that all is not as it seems, Li boldly explores the effects of communism on language, faith, and an entire people, underlining transformation in its many meanings and incarnations.

Media Buzz

On Point - June 9, 2010
All Things Considered - September 26, 2005