A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Product Description In this prize-winning collection of short stories, Yiyun Li brings us a modern China facing up to a complex history of repression and guilt. 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."