title: A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories
author:  Yiyun Li 
description: Yiyun Li is a true storyteller. Great stories offer us the details of life on the riverbanks: birth, family, dinner, and love, all framing the powerful flow of terror, death, political change, the river itself. A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is as grand an epic and as tenderly private as a reader could wish.<br /><b>Amy Bloom</b>, author of <i>Come to Me</i><br /><br />With great tenderness, tact, and humor, these stories open a world that is culturally remote from us, and at the same time as humanly intimate as if its people were our own family and their thoughts the thoughts that lie nearest our own hearts.<br /><b>Marilynne Robinson</b>, author of <i>Gilead</i> and <i>Housekeeping</i><br /><br />This extraordinary collection reminds you just how big a short story can be. With wit, ruthlessness, and an understanding of human natureits grand follies, private sorrows, and petty dreamsA Thousand Years of Good Prayers may remind you of Flannery OConnor, though Li is an original. Read this book and marvel at a writer both at the height of her powers and at the start of a brilliant career.<br /><b>Elizabeth McCracken</b>, author of <i>The Giants House</i><br /><br /><br /><i>From the Hardcover edition.</i>
zlib_text: Table of Contents
  Title Page
  Dedication
  Praise
  Extra
  After a Life
  Immortality
  The Princess of Nebraska
  Love in the Marketplace
  Son
  The Arrangement
  Death Is Not a Bad Joke If Told the Right Way
  Persimmons
  A Thousand Years of Good Prayers
  Acknowledgments
  A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: A Reader’s Guide
  A Conversation with Yiyun Li
  Questions and Topics for Discussion
  About the Author
  Copyright Page
  
  For Dapeng
  
  Praise for A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS
  “A subtle and original perspective on the latest chapter in China’s turbulent history . . .
  Li is a valuable firsthand guide to this decade of mind-bending change. . . . [She]
  shows a light touch that, combined with her gift for characterization, saves her stories
  from turning into consciousness-raising exercises. . . . Poignant.” —The New York
  Times Book Review
  “Thoughtful, deceptively quiet, and always surprising, these seamless stories remind
  us that regardless of the society we inhabit, the most basic human emotions . . .
  transcend 