Gold Boy, Emerald Girl

In these spellbinding stories, Yiyun Li, a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner, a MacArthur Fellow, and one of The New Yorker’s top 20 fiction writers under 40, gives us exquisite stories in which politics and folklore magnificently illuminate the human condition. A professor introduces her middle-aged son to a favorite student, unaware of the student’s true affections. A lifelong bachelor finds kinship with a man wrongly accused of an indiscretion. Six women establish a private investigating agency to battle extramarital affairs in Beijing. Written in lyrical prose and with stunning honesty, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl introduces us to worlds strange and familiar, creating a mesmerizing and vibrant landscape of life.

"A literary voice that brings to mind Nabokov's description of Chekhov's narrative style: ‘The story is told in the most natural way possible...the way one person relates to another the most important things in his life, slowly and yet without a break, in a slightly subdued voice.' As in reading Chekhov, one is struck by how profoundly important the lives orordinary people are made to seem, and by what a sizable chunk of existence - an entire life or several lives - has been compressed into a few pages....[Yiyun Li] succeeds in making the details of a very particular (and very sharply drawn) time and place express something broader and more universal....[Li's stories] have the power to create hushed intervals that resonate with emotion....GoldBoy, Emerald Girl is an example of the treasure an artist can fashion from the raw materials of ordinary existence."

--Francine Prose, The New York Times Book Review, Editor'sChoice

"Li'scollection well deserves a celebration with its sophistication and honesty, which often derive from a deep understanding of the history, culture and politics of China, and of their impact on ordinary people. . . . Yes, sorrows may arise during times of reflection, but it'simpossible not to fall in love with the privacy and tranquility of the time and place."

-San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, Cover Review

"YiyunLi is a marvel. . . . Li's insights into Chinese culture make her stories fascinating reading. But the greatest pleasure comes from the admirable elegance of her work. Her writing is lyrical, circular and finely etched, with an emotional impact that both satisfies and surprises."

-NPR.org, "Books We Like"

"Withtheir quiet authority, exquisite control, and illumination of those quicksilver moments on which entire lives pivot, Li's tales lodge in your rib cage long after you've finished reading....[Li will] remind you ofwhat it's like to be human in today's increasingly fragmented world."

--Marie Claire

"Breathtaking....starklywondrous....gorgeous fiction....Yiyun Li writes in simple, penetrating prose....[Li] is an impresario of our essential loneliness. Still, these nine stories are not sad, but astringently beautiful."

--Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Liis extraordinary . . . a storyteller of the first order .. . each tale in this collection is as wild and beautiful and thorny as a heart. . . Liinhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion thatone cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents."

--Junot Díaz

"Masterly....nuanced....Liconjures a bewildering new economy China, but her eloquent understandingof people struggling to help one another ‘make a world that would accommodate their loneliness' feels universal."

--Vogue

"Delectable....subtleand assured....[Li] finds the pulse points in the lives of her Chinese andChinese-American characters and renders her findings with empathy and exactitude."

--Elle

"Li displays a staggering poise and grace in her latest collection of short stories....the yarns spun in Gold Boy, Emerald Girl prove to be as varied as humanity itself."

--Time Out New York

"[Li's]writing is minimal, yet packed with detail. At times, it feels like she is reporting in the manner of a journalist; at others she teeters on the verge of lyricism, often walking this line within a single paragraph."

-New York Observer

"A stellar assortment of stories...further proof that Li deserves to be considered among the best living fiction writers."

--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Brilliant...a frighteningly lucid vision of human fate."

--Publishers Weekly (starred review)