Skip to content
Scan a barcode
Scan
Added to your cart
Paperback A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories Book

ISBN: 081297333X

ISBN13: 9780812973334

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Stories

Select Format

Select Condition ThriftBooks Help Icon

Recommended

Format: Paperback

Condition: Very Good

$4.89
Save $12.11!
List Price $17.00
Almost Gone, Only 1 Left!

Book Overview

Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers introduces a remarkable new writer whose breathtaking stories are set in China and among Chinese Americans in the United States. In this rich, astonishing collection, Yiyun Li illuminates how mythology, politics, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing, to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago, to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose.

"Immortality," winner of The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize for new writers, tells the story of a young man who bears a striking resemblance to a dictator and so finds a calling to immortality. In "The Princess of Nebraska," a man and a woman who were both in love with a young actor in China meet again in America and try to reconcile the lost love with their new lives.

"After a Life" illuminates the vagaries of marriage, parenthood, and gender, unfolding the story of a couple who keep a daughter hidden from the world. And in "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," in which a man visits America for the first time to see his recently divorced daughter, only to discover that all is not as it seems, Li boldly explores the effects of communism on language, faith, and an entire people, underlining transformation in its many meanings and incarnations.

These and other daring stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer.
More by Yiyun Li
The Book of Goose
The Book of Goose
Yiyun Li

from: $6.29

The Vagrants
The Vagrants
Yiyun Li, James D. Horan

from: $4.69

Where Reasons End
Where Reasons End
Yiyun Li

from: $5.99

Must I Go
Must I Go
Yiyun Li

from: $4.49

Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life
Yiyun Li

from: $6.99

Gold Boy, Emerald Girl: Stories
Gold Boy, Emerald Girl: Stories
Yiyun Li

from: $4.79

Wednesday's Child: Stories
Wednesday's Child: Stories
Yiyun Li

from: $11.79

Kinder than Solitude
Kinder than Solitude
Yiyun Li

from: $4.89

Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li
Tolstoy Together: 85 Days of War and Peace with Yiyun Li
Yiyun Li, A Public Space

from: $26.56

The Dead of Winter (Tin House #34)
The Dead of Winter (Tin House #34)
Yiyun Li, Joshua Ferris, Tin House Books, Bruce Smith

from: $7.39

Things in Nature Merely Grow
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li

from: $20.44

Gilgamesh
Gilgamesh
Yiyun Li

Out of Stock

Glimmer Train Stories, #54
Glimmer Train Stories, #54
Miriam Novogrodsky, Sandra Hunter, George Fahey, Joseph Flanagan, Yiyun Li, Lex Williford, Andre Dubus III, William Pierce, Paul Rawlins, R. Clifton Spargo, Askold Melnyczuk, David Hicks, Lucia Nevai, Thomas O'Malley

Out of Stock

Ploughshares (Winter 2004-05)
Ploughshares (Winter 2004-05)
Yiyun Li, Donald Hall, Xu Xi, Ploughshares, Sandra Cisneros, Gerald Stern, Maxine Kumin, Joy Harjo, Philip Schultz, Gary Soto, Eddie Chuculate

Out of Stock

Stories Upon Stories
Stories Upon Stories
Yiyun Li, Alessandro Baricco, Dave Eggers, Umberto Eco, A.B. Yehoshua

Out of Stock

A Sheltered Woman
A Sheltered Woman
Yiyun Li

Out of Stock

The Paris Review, Fall 2004
The Paris Review, Fall 2004
Annie Proulx, Malinda McCollum, Yiyun Li

Out of Stock

PEN America 14: The Good Books
PEN America 14: The Good Books
Nadine Gordimer, Hervé Le Tellier, Margaret Atwood, Jenny Holzer, Isabel Allende, Marcelo Figueras, Honor Moore, Amitava Kumar, Najat El Hachmi, Asaf Schurr, Grace Paley, Thomas Beller, Michael Moore, Ernesto Cardenal, Gary Shteyngart, Günter Grass, Ludovic Debeurme, Brian Dettmer, Saul Bellow, Jessica Hagedorn, PEN America, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Karen Russell, Yiyun Li

Out of Stock

Customer Reviews

5 customer ratings | 5 reviews

Rated 5 stars
captivating

Enoumously enjoyable read. If you like short stories that will grip YOU, enthrall YOU, & "will you" back begging for more..... Creatively written in an intellectual frame. I so enjoyed Yiyun Li's written imaginary thoughts. So different than I think; yet "the same".

0Report

Rated 5 stars
Ten Perfect Jewels

Warning: Begin reading "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers" at the BEGINNING of a weekend. If you wait till Sunday afternoon, you may find yourself skipping work on Monday, because you can't put it down. Yiyun Lee is a gifted story teller and an artist of the written word. Each of the ten stories in this collection is a perfect jewel.

1Report

Rated 5 stars
Just the kind of short stories I always look for and rarely find

This is the best collection of short stories I've read in a long time! I love the style of writing---very straightforward but also with so much meaning in every paragraph. Lately it seems every piece of fiction I read is gimmacky in some way--constantly changing perspectives, flowery phrases--but this is real writing, about people in tough situations interacting, about generations relating, about sad memories, but always...

1Report

Rated 5 stars
Compelling short stories

I first found Ms. Li's short story, Immortality, in the Paris Review. She frames a story around a rural Chinese village's tradition of sending castrated young men (the euphemism she uses is "cleaned") to the imperial palace to serve as eunuchs. Fast forward to the Cultural Revolution, the story shifts focus to a young man with the likeness of the country's dictator (it can be inferred that she is speaking of Mao Tse-Tung)...

1Report

Rated 5 stars
Good Prayers, Great Stories

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is Yiyun Li's highly acclaimed short story collection which won the inaugeral Frank O'Connor Short Story Award among others. If proof were ever needed that US MFA programmes don't necessarily churn out writing clones, Li amply provides it. (She attended the famous Iowa Writer's Workshop). Her writing is fresh, lyrical - yet at times deeply disturbing. The short stories did precisely what short...

1Report

Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
GoDaddy Verified and Secured