A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

Yiyun Li offers a deeply moving debut collection that spans continents and generations, exploring the quiet complexities of Chinese and Chinese American lives. From Beijing to suburban America, her stories reveal the intimate struggles behind migration, family ties, lost love, and cultural dislocation.

Whether it’s a man whose resemblance to a dictator shapes his destiny, or a father visiting his estranged daughter in a foreign land, Li writes with restraint and precision, uncovering how history, politics, and myth shape the personal choices we make. Her characters—dislocated yet resilient—confront silence, reinvention, and the weight of unspoken truths.

With prose as lucid as it is emotionally nuanced, this collection marks the arrival of a vital literary voice attuned to the fragile intersections of identity, memory, and belonging.