The second collection of stories from Yiyun Li, author of the Guardian First Book Award-winning A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Vagrants. The stories in this collection, like the stories in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, are mostly set in China. The country portrayed here is the China of the 21st century, where economic development has led to new situations unknown to previous decades: residents in a shabby apartment building witnessing in awe the real estate boom; a local entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist sheltering women in trouble in her mansion; a group of retired women discovering fame late in their lives as private investigators specialising in extramarital affairs; a young woman setting up a blog to publicise the alleged affair of her father. Underneath the veneer of prosperity and opportunity, however, lie the struggles of characters trying to reorient themselves in the unfamiliar landscapes of modern China: a widower, reminiscing about his wife, confronts a young unmarried woman purchasing condoms in a pharmacy; a new wife makes a plea to have a baby with her husband who was to be executed only to discover that she has become an instant celebrity; a middle-aged couple in America, who, upon losing their only daughter, return to their hometown in China to hire a young woman as a surrogate mother. These characters' fates are affected as much by the historical moments in which they reside as by the choices they make. Yiyun Li's new collection of stories is a report from the front-line of a changing world, and confirms Li to be a writer not to be missed.
Four: A Divergent Collection
Veronica Roth
Harper Collins Publishers Limited
The Reservoir Tapes
Jon Mcgregor
Magic Seeds
V.S. Naipaul
Picador/Pan Macmillan Publishers Limited
Guerrillas
The Mystic Masseur
Mini Shopaholic
Sophie Kinsella
Black Swan/Penguin Random House Group
Slowness
Milan Kundera
Faber & Faber/Penguin Random House Group
Running In The Family
Michael Ondaatje
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Go Set A Watchman
Harper Lee
Arrow Books/Penguin Random House
The Schooldays Of Jesus (Longlisted For The Man Booker Prize 2016)
J.M. Coetzee
Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House Group
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