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Yiyun Li
The Vagrants
Random House
Brilliant and illuminating, this
astonishing debut novel by the
award-winning writer Yiyun Li is set
in China in the late 1970s, when
Beijing was rocked by the Democratic
Wall Movement, an anti-Communist
groundswell designed to move China
beyond the dark shadow of the
Cultural Revolution toward a more
enlightened and open society. In
this powerful and beautiful story,
we follow a group of people in a
small town during this dramatic and
harrowing time, the era that was a
forebear of the Tiananmen Square
uprising.
Morning dawns on the provincial city
of Muddy River. A young woman, Gu
Shan, a bold spirit and a follower
of Chairman Mao, has renounced her
faith in Communism. Now a political
prisoner, she is to be executed for
her dissent. Her distraught mother,
determined to follow the custom of
burning her only child’s clothing to
ease her journey into the next world,
is about to make another bold
decision. Shan’s father, Teacher Gu,
who has already, in his heart and
mind, buried his rebellious daughter,
begins to retreat into memories.
Neither of them imagines that their
daughter’s death will have profound
and far-reaching effects, in Muddy
River and beyond.
In luminous prose, Yiyun Li weaves
together the lives of these and
other unforgettable characters,
including a serious seven-year-old
boy, Tong; a
crippled girl named Nini; the
sinister idler Bashi; and Kai, a
beautiful radio news announcer who
is married to a man from a powerful
family. Life in a world of
oppression and pain is portrayed
through stories of resilience,
sacrifice, perversion, courage, and
belief. We read of delicate moments
and acts of violence by mothers,
sons, husbands, neighbors, wives,
lovers, and more, as Gu Shan’s
execution spurs a brutal government
reaction.
Writing with profound emotion, and
in the superb tradition of fiction
by such writers as Orhan Pamuk and
J. M. Coetzee, Yiyun Li gives us a
stunning novel that is at once a
picture of life in a special part of
the world during a historic period,
a universal portrait of human
frailty and courage, and a
mesmerizing work of art.
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