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by: Yiyun Li  List Price: $13.95 Amazon.com's Price: $11.16 You Save: $2.79 (20%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 813.6 EAN: 9780812973334 ISBN: 081297333X Label: Random House Trade Paperbacks Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 240 Publication Date: September 12, 2006 Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks Release Date: September 12, 2006 Studio: Random House Trade Paperbacks Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: 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. These and other daring stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer. From the Hardcover edition. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Great, but nothing newI admire and respect her writings very much. However, as a Chinese person who grew up in China and having read many contemporary Chinese authors, I have to say I find her stories copycats of some of the greatest writing ever written in the last ten years by Chinese authors that have not been translated into English. Her stories do have a lot of impact and force, but I can't help but see her as simply taking great Chinese writings and re-writing them in English with the exact same style, same kind ... Read More Rating:  - Black/WhiteI finished this book and I have mixed feelings. Not because the stories are bad. On the contrary, they are quite good. What bothered me is that almost aggressive anti-communistic attitude. There is one sentence where old Iranian woman says "I love China. China a good country, very old" and that would be pretty much everything said positive about China (and that comes from the mouth of Iranian women who never visited the country she's talking about!). I don't have doubts that communism ... Read More Rating:  - Engrossing Contemporary Chinese LiteratureContemporary Chinese short stories are rarely translated into English, and those written originally in English by a Chinese author are even more infrequent. The reader is rewarded by a series of 10 character pieces set in either China or the US. The author captures the look, feel, and emotions of modern China, which is a product of its ancient civilization, overlaid the tumultuous communist century. For those that take place in the US, one sees the intersection of 2 very different societies in a ... Read More Rating: - What we sacrifice makes life meaningfulYiyun Li's stories are anchored in the Chinese past as well as in the present. The scars of the Cultural Revolution with its indiscriminate victimizing, its drastic priggishness, its denunciations and liquidations are still felt in nearly all families. It was a period of black and white, of for or against, of silence or lies. Modern China is in a serious upheaval and ravaged by doubt: `once doubt starts, it runs rampant.' Now, `a bird is willing to die for a morsel of food. A man is willing ... Read More Rating: - Ten Perfect JewelsWarning: Begin reading "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" at the BEGINNING of a weekend. If you wait till Sunday afternoon, you may find yourself skipping work on Monday, because you can't put it down. Yiyun Lee is a gifted story teller and an artist of the written word. Each of the ten stories in this collection is a perfect jewel. 
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