Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing and came to the United States in 1996. She has received fellowships and awards from Lannan Foundation and Whiting Foundation. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, Guardian First Book Award, and California Book Award for first fiction. Her novel, The Vagrants, won the gold medal of California Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for Dublin IMPAC Award. Gold Boy, Emerald Girl, her second collection, was a finalist of Story Prize and shortlisted for Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Her books have been translated into more than twenty languages. She was selected by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35, and was named by The New Yorker as one of the top 20 writers under 40. MacArthur Foundation named her a 2010 fellow. She is a contributing editor to the Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband and their two sons, and teaches at University of California, Davis.
Palaver (2025) Bryan Washington "Few writers write about tenderness as Bryan Washington does-unadorned tenderness that is full of heart and humor but steers clear from familiar sentimentalities and convenient solutions. With deep understanding of human relationships, Palaver is a rare novel that offers companionship to solitary readers and lonely souls."
An Oral History of Atlantis (2025) Ed Park "Ed Park is a magician of storytelling. These stories explore the multiplicity of time and space - artistic, historical, and psychological - and confront once and again the shapeshifting border between reality and unreality. With sly humor and deep understanding, Park makes the reader laugh from disquiet, and tear up from being seen."
The South (2025) Tash Aw "Tash Aw presents a world as timeless as the worlds brought to us by Turgenev and V. S. Naipaul, and yet catches the subtle and unstoppable changes each generation faces. Reflecting the human entanglements that come with home, land, and homeland, The South is a shimmeringly intelligent and elegiacally intimate novel."
This Strange Eventful History (2024) Claire Messud "Messud is a magnificent storyteller, and the novel, an all-encompassing history of many human hearts and any human heart, will linger and haunt us as the best and the most heartbreaking memory."
Choice (2024) Neel Mukherjee "Neel Mukherjee's keen eyes, formidable intelligence, masterful scalpel, and compassionate approach offer us reassurance and hope without any illusion."
Daybreak (2024) Matt Gallagher "Matt Gallagher has written an important and timely novel, which works as a powerful testimonial to Ezra Pound's statement that literature is news that remains news. Daybreak is history and memory at its most raw, intimate, and brilliant, and is a book to be widely read and discussed."
Change (2024) Édouard Louis "Edouard Louis is a master in the poetics of juxtaposition, elucidating the hostile and the intimate, the murky and the pure, the vulnerable and the resilient, the changeable and unchangeable of the world with his brilliant and preternatural intelligence. Change is a poignant and compelling read!"
Ilium (2024) Lea Carpenter "Sharp and riveting, Ilium is a literary novel that reads like a psychological thriller. As a masterful and beguiling storyteller, Lea Carpenter is the perfect guide for this journey to a secret place of intrigue and betrayals."
Alice Sadie Celine (2023) Sarah Blakley-Cartwright "The three unforgettable women in this novel remind me of the dancing figures in the Matisse painting, their secrets joyful and mysterious, their dramas delightful and powerful. Delicious and subversive, Alice Sadie Celine is a mesmerizing read."
The Hive and the Honey (2023) Paul Yoon "The stories in The Hive and the Honey are geographically and temporally diverse. Each opens an inviting door to a seemingly calm moment in life, only to cast the readers into the deep and murkey undercurrent of history. Amid violence are moments of gentleness; underneath darkness and bleakness are glimpses of light and humor. Yoon is a beautiful and beguiling writer, and should be called a national - or, international - treasure!"
The Unsettled (2023) Ayana Mathis "Ayana Mathis is one of the most brilliant writers working in today's America. A tour de force, The Unsettled is a poetic and fierce study of the conflicts between circumstances and personalities, between dreams and survivals, between the indifference of the world at large and the passions of individuals."
Witness (2023) Jamel Brinkley "Jamel Brinkley reminds one of iconic short-story writers Edward P. Jones and Mavis Gallant. His characters, full of mysteries and secrets, do not strive to be something larger than life, nor do they allow themselves to be reduced into categorizable and explicable figures. Each story in Witness brings a novel's worth of richness and complexity. This is a dazzling collection by a masterful storyteller."
Commitment (2023) Mona Simpson "Few novelists write about America as Mona Simpson does, with her acute understanding of the tension between external forces-economy, technology, society-and individual dreams, between nostalgia and the future, between yearning and deception. Commitment is a majestic novel about an American family and an American century, its vision and scope bringing to mind the work of Tolstoy, Stendahl, and Balzac."
Western Lane (2023) Chetna Maroo "Combining the precision and the efficiency of an athlete with the mysteries of childhood loss and memory, Western Lane is a novel in which we linger on every breathing line and relish every close observation. What an exceptionally talented writer Chetna Maroo is!"
Other Names for Love (2022) Taymour Soomro "A twenty-first century variation of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons... Taymour Soomro is a thrilling new addition to international literature."
Golden Age (2022) Wang Xiaobo "Startlingly funny, darkly profound,Golden Age is one of the most memorable novels published in Chinese language in the past hundred years, and it will still be read a hundred years from now."
Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry "A timeless tale of memory, desire, dreams lost and altered, love changed and unchanged."
Thank You, Mr. Nixon (2022) Gish Jen "Be prepared to be awed and enthralled by one of our best writers! Fiercely funny and unrelentingly honest, Gish Jen's new collection places a finger on the pulse of many lives caught between the indifferent movement of history and the profound desires of individuals."
The Family Chao (2022) Lan Samantha Chang "In this symphonic novel, Lan Samantha Chang gives us a multitude of souls lost and found: the gregarious are isolated, the ruthless are hunted, the voiceless scheme with hidden power, the innocent suffer from murderous desire. This is one of the finest and most ambitious novels about America I've read in recent years."
What Strange Paradise (2021) Omar El Akkad "What an imaginative, touching, and necessary novel Omar El Akkad has brought to us. It reminds us of the human stories behind headlines and statistics, and gives us one of the most memorable children characters, whose story adds urgency and poignancy to that ‘awfully big adventure’ stated by Peter Pan."
Filthy Animals (2021) Brandon Taylor "A writer who meets life with a rare combination of will, wonderment, temperament, and vitality."
The Five Wounds (2021) Kirstin Valdez Quade "An unputdownable novel, The Five Wounds takes my breath away with its intimate, humorous, and heart-aching portrayal of a New Mexican family. Kirstin Valdez Quade can make a reader laugh and break a reader’s heart in the same breath, and she leaves us, by the end of the novel, in awe of the dazzling power of her storytelling."
Likes (2020) Sarah Shun-lien Bynum "Sarah Shun-lien Bynum not only makes us see and feel what we may have missed in our busy lives, but articulates what we see and feel with the precise words we’ve always been searching for but rarely find. How does she capture the world in its shimmery and inexplicable state so deftly? Stories in this collection lead the readers to feel nostalgic for experiences both lived and missed, alarmed and yet thrilled by the mysteries hidden in everyday moments, and above all, hopeful and grateful that there is no need to compromise: we can live as fully and expansively as these stories."
Heaven and Earth (2020) Paolo Giordano "An intense novel about passions and reasons, unbreakable bonds and reckless excursions. Giordano is a master storyteller."
Wild Swims (2020) Dorthe Nors "Reading Nors's work, one is reminded of the thrills and dangers of living."
99 Nights in Logar (2019) Jamil Jan Kochai "Imagine a twelve-year-old Don Quixote traversing a world full of absurdities and tragedies. Imagine The Arabian Nights set with America overshadowing an ancient landscape. 99 Nights in Logar is hilariously sad and heartbreakingly funny. Jamil Jan Kochai, a thrilling new writer, achieves in this book that rare quality of a storyteller both ageless and contemporary."
Last Stories (2018) William Trevor "A beautiful writer... I would not have become a writer at all had I not discovered his work."
Good Morning, Midnight (2016) Lily Brooks-Dalton "What does it mean to be isolated from the ordinariness of the everyday world, yet to find the extraordinariness of being close to another human being? With imagination, empathy, and insight into unchanged and unchangeable human nature, Lily Brooks-Dalton takes us on an emotional journey in this beautiful debut."
Landfalls (2015) Naomi J Williams "Naomi J. Williams is an astute observer of both actions and psychologies, and this brilliant book brings us closer to our fellow explorers before our time."
Panorama City (2012) Antoine Wilson "With ears keenly tuned to the music of language, and a limpid mind slyly hidden behind a persistent soliloquist, Antoine Wilson has written an intricate novel that makes us laugh and cry."
Bitter in the Mouth (2010) Monique Truong "Be prepared for a full range of tastes of life in Bitter in the Mouth: friendship, loyalty, love, family, and above all, the mysteries at every corner of one’s history that make us who we are. Monique Truong is a great observer and a beautiful writer."
Locke 1928 (2007) Shawna Yang Ryan "A beautiful debut, Water Ghosts opens up a page in history that sometimes is forgotten by both cultures that once coexisted in Locke, a Sacramento Chinese farming town. By mapping out the familiar and the strange territories of human passion and retelling the old myths, Shawna Yang Ryan tells a story that, in the end, is about how America was truly made."
