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The Vagrants

The Vagrants

by YiyunLi (Author)

  • Used

    Hardcover 2009

    $3.47
Synopsis

The much-anticipated first novel from the Guardian First Book Award-winning Chinese writer acclaimed by Michel Faber as having 'the talent, the vision and the respect for life's insoluble mysteries to be a truly fine writer.' In the provincial town of Muddy Waters in China, a young woman named Gu Shan is sentenced to death for her loss of faith in Communism. She is twenty-eight years old and has already spent ten years in prison. The citizens stage a protest after her death and, over the following six weeks, the town goes through uncertainty, hope, and fear until eventually the rebellion is brutally suppressed. We follow the pain of Gu Shan's parents, the hope and fear of the leaders of the protest and their families. Even those who seem unconnected to the tragedy -- an eleven-year-old boy seeking fame and glory, a nineteen-year-old village idiot in love with a young and deformed girl, and old couple making a living by scavenging the town's garbage cans -- are caught up in remorseless turn of events. Yiyun Li's novel is based on the true story which took place in China in 1979.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 352
 Edition: First Edition
 Publisher: Fourth Estate
Published: 05 Feb 2009
ISBN 10: 0007196644
ISBN 13: 9780007196647

Media Reviews
'Yiyun Li has written a book that is as important politically as it is artistically. 'The Vagrants' is an enormous achievement.' Ann Patchett 'This is a book of loss and pain and fear that manages to include such unexpected tenderness and grace notes that, just as one can bear it no longer, one cannot put it down. This is not an easy read, only a necessary and deeply moving one.' Amy Bloom 'A starkly moving portrayal of China in the wake of the Cultural Revolution, this book weaves together the stories of a vivid group of characters all struggling to find a home in their own country. Yiyun Li writes with a quiet, steady force, at once stoic and heartbreaking.' Peter Ho Davies Praise for 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers': 'She is utterly at home in the short story as shaped by Chekhov and Maupassant, in the tones currently used by William Trevor or Alice Munro. Her own talent is to deal with people who have no obvious power or importance, who have been disappointed in small ways which Li manages to make seem heart-wrenching and full of strange resonance!a writer of great but quiet ambition!What concerns her most is the large matter of love, in all its twists and turns, and time itself, and how little we reckon with it, and disappointment in all its strange variations, and levels of deep emotion and attachment buried in silence and misunderstanding.' Colm Toibin, New York Review of Books 'Li's writing is beautifully spare and controlled.' Times 'Yiyun's confidence as a storyteller lends her fiction a traditional air, but there's nothing old fashioned about her perspective!When I've sampled other recent Chinese writing, I've had a sense of western publishers being seduced by the novelty of it all, snapping up authors with dramatic histories and slim talents. Yiyun is the real deal!Yiyun has the talent, the vision and the respect for life's insoluble mysteries to be a truly fine writer.' Michel Faber, Guardian 'Great narrative skill!demonstrates that the best way to learn about people in a foreign culture is through good fiction.' Irish Times
Author Bio
Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China, and moved to the United States in 1996. She is the recipient of several prizes for her writing and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, Li's stories have been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review and elsewhere. Her collection of short stories, 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers', won the Guardian First Book Award. She lives in Iowa City with her husband and their two sons.