num_pages: 209
description: Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable first collection of stories about China from an author set to be 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', 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.
language: English
title: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
titlecomplete: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
genres: China, American, Asian Literature, 21st Century, Short Stories, Asia, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Fiction
ratings_count: 3523
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Orange Prize
category: New Writers, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Guardian First Book Award, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: California Book Award
category: First Fiction (Silver), awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Kiriyama Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel
publisher: Fourth Estate