A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories

Excellent literature. High quality! Stories are emotionally deep, not superficial. First time reading this author. Enjoyed it very much!

And nothing is wrong with translations: they can be better than originals. In this case though, it is somewhat rigid, if not stiff. But overall it is very insightful and clever writing. What bothered me somewhat is the author’s obvious negativity toward her own country of birth that, judging from the Wikipedia’s story, provided her with a solid foundation for her current life: a good, educated and intellectual family, and apparently free first-class university education. But you never know: maybe without criticizing her old home and praising her new, adopted one, she would never be able to have her stories published here and her career highly advanced as it is. I will definitely buy another book by this thought-provoking author.

Many years ago I read a most disagreeable and distasteful book called The Lord of the Flies. Over the years, I've probably read that book 15 times. It never gets any easier to read, I never find myself liking any of the characters any more than I did the first time, but somehow I feel that understanding (and remembering) the essence of the story is hugely important. So with wrinkled-up nose and a small sense of dread and melancholy, I read it again. And somehow, at the end, I feel I'm a better person for having done so. I think A Thousand Years of Good Prayers may fall into the same category of literature. I won't ENJOY reading it again, but I suspect I will do so. I won't like the characters any more than I did the first time, but my heart tells me that the world is full of characters (and stories) like theirs. In many ways, these stories aren't about Chinese people & culture so much as they are stories about people in general: their despair, petty cruelties, short-sightedness, and oft crushed hopes and dreams. Like The Lord of the Flies, these stories may take hold of your heart and never quite let go.

This is the first title from this author I read, and there is something about her writing that's find just so lovely and soothing to read, even when the story itself is heartbreaking. The prose is quiet but it sticks with you. I am a huge lover of short story collections and this is a wonderful example of a truly incredible art form.

Some background, I grew up in Beijing and attended good schools just like her, and I am much older than her. The point? She has no experience whatsoever - everything she wrote about the past was from wild imaginations, almost anything related to Mao, culture revolution and communists was far from the truth, hearsay, mostly.The worst part of the book is the deep brown-nosed kissing the American *** in the expense of demonizing her own and my home country, China. America this and America that. As if once you come to America, everything would be immediately nice and dandy. The fact is if you cannot thrive in China, you cannot thrive in America either. Why? Because in China, you can at least rely on your parents and relatives and your connections, but in America, you must fight all the way by yourself, alone, not to mention there's Green Card issue and many foreigners have been forced to leave America because of it. As a first generation immigrant, just to get Green Card LEGALLY without marrying yourself off is extreme hard work and time consuming - read 5-10 years minimum. On top of that, you add social, language, culture problem, what makes you think live in America would be any easier?The worst part is:"If you grew up in a language that you never used to express your feelings, it would be easier to take another language (English, of course) and talk more in the new language. It makes you a new person." - A Thousand Year's Good PrayerI don't know which part of China or earth she's from, but hell, I have no problem expressing my feelings either in Chinese or English. It does not matter we are talking about feelings, politics or philosophy.To me, she got a big brown nose, which makes her writing really bad.I gave it two stars just because she's a Chinese and willing to try to write in English.The only $ I wasted so far on Amazon.

In my quest to read around the world, I arrived in China with Yiyun Li's collection of short stories. Li, who emigrated to the US after she'd graduated from Peking University in 1996, studied Immunology at the University of Iowa, and started writing because everyone else was doing it. Wow. Lucky us!My favorite in this collection of stories is "Immortality", about the rural Chinese custom of sending castrated young men to the imperial palace to serve as eunuchs. Her stories weave past and present China together and tell stories with the gift of an experienced story-teller.This is one of the best books I've read this year, maybe THE best.

I had to read this for my Literature class in college last semester. I was very iffy about it because I hate to read and it seemed really long. I really enjoyed this book, and I love that it was not one long story I was thinking it would be. It is little short stories compiled into one book. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and even received an A+ on my essay.

I got this for an English 102 required reading and I wasn't too excited when I heard "collection of short stories" but this was great. I read it over and over again and it was really good. I'm not going to leave summaries of the book but it was just great. If you like China and you enjoy short stories and reading about other people's struggles, this is the book for you!

This is / could be a monumental account. The fact that I gave 4 stars and not 5 is that I feel I will need to return and re-read individual stories in the future and in light of events. The trouble with short stories is that they often finish just as your want it to develop more. You get glimpses of reality bit only that.My mistake was reading "The Vagrants" first and, although based on one or more realities, I did not quite realise this until I read the epilogue of this book. And so it seams all has a bearing on reality - on experience, reality and observation. I certainly will re-read later in part or whole; but certainly worth looking at. Each story has a truth and conflict to tell.

This was one of those maddening books that I could tell was well-written but couldn't finish because it was so deeply depressing. 'A Thousand Years of Good Prayers' is a series of short stories, mostly set in modern China but with at least one (as far as I got) set in America. The principal topics appear to be the loathsomeness of Maoist and post-Mao China and the misery of most Chinese.I'm sure life in China can be very difficult. Li was very skilful at showing how the repressive nature of Maoism has combined to toxic effect with more old-fashioned ideas from Chinese culture. For all that Mao claimed to have liberated his country, it's clear from Li's stories that people in same-sex relationships and unmarried women still have a horribly tough time of it, and that there's insufficient state help offered to the poor, and to those coping with serious illness, their own or that of family members. The book is certainly essential reading in times where Mao appears to be being given an increasingly easy time of it. And it does provide some interesting insights into modern China - though I agree with the reviewer who felt that it read a bit 'China is bad, America is good'.The problem is that every single story is so miserable (at least, as far as I got) that the book ceases to be enjoyable reading in any way, and just becomes a catalogue of misfortunes proving that life in modern China is hell. By the time I had read about the old woman whose attempt at a late-life marriage goes horribly wrong and who is subsequently sacked from her job at a school due to a pupil's perfidy, the elderly couple struggling to care for their disabled daughter on very little money who finally take desperate measures, the young man whose life is ruined by his close resemblance to Mao, the young Chinese girl and older male Chinese scholar who both have their hearts broken by a male star of the Peking Opera who leaves the girl pregnant (this was the best of the stories I read), the unhappy girl who finds her mother is not her birth mother after her parents get divorced, and the young teacher Sansan who was jilted by her lover, I couldn't bear any more and gave the book away to my local charity shop. There was just too much misery. Other writers - Nicole Mones or Liu Hong, for example - have managed to criticize Mao's regime and modern China while still showing the beauty of the country and its culture and that, to paraphrase Slavenka Drakulic, it is possible to 'survive communism and even laugh'. Li simply shows the misery with no hint of anything that might alleviate it, and it felt too much.

Yiyun Li writes with of very different Chinese people who cope better of worse through the huge disruptive transitions of the 20th and 21st century. Many face impossible difficulties, some of their own making, but Yiyun Li's humanity enables us to see them and their interactions with honesty and at times considerable humour.. Her characterization is clear and I was engaged with them from the outset, despite the fact that these are just a glimpse of people from a hugely different background and culture.The stories are in a format and structure which is very familiar to Western readers which probably also helps to make them accessible. They are beautifully

Li gently tells us the brutal truth about China's recent history and what goes on behind the apparently benign face that modern China presents to the world. She writes with skill and humour to tell stories about the lives and tragedies of ordinary people.

This collection of short stories based in China captures invaluable insights into 20th century Chinese traditions and every day way of life there. Li's narrative style adds a sort of mythical tone to the stories, as one might have expected ancient Chinese myths to be told. The way that Li focuses on the development of human feelings within Communist China really magnifies the effect that a Totalitarian regime can have on a human mind. The stories act as a kind of historical insight into China over the last 100 years but also act as an analysis on human behaviour in general and how people act and cope under extreme situations.I absolutely loved the style of this book and how it allows your imagination to explore powerful, and at times surreal, situations. A great book!