The Vagrants: A Novel
Sep 2026 · Sold by Picador
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352
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About this ebook
A tale of the far-reaching consequences of a political prisoner’s execution in the provincial city of Muddy River in China.
A young woman wakes in Muddy River as a political prisoner. A former member of the Red Guard, Gu Shan has been sentenced to death for speaking against the Chinese Communist Party and turning away from Mao. As her parents begin to grieve in anticipation, they have no sense of how their provincial city will be totally reshaped by their daughter’s death.
The stunning debut novel from the Pulitzer finalist Yiyun Li, The Vagrants follows an unforgettable group of characters throughout Muddy River as they navigate a moment of profound upheaval. The execution and its fallout bring every sector of society into contact with each other—and every tension between lovers, families, bureaucrats, peasants, and politicians to a breaking point. With care, restraint, and deeply felt emotion, Li attends to the brutality and care that structure life and survival under authoritarian rule.
A young woman wakes in Muddy River as a political prisoner. A former member of the Red Guard, Gu Shan has been sentenced to death for speaking against the Chinese Communist Party and turning away from Mao. As her parents begin to grieve in anticipation, they have no sense of how their provincial city will be totally reshaped by their daughter’s death.
The stunning debut novel from the Pulitzer finalist Yiyun Li, The Vagrants follows an unforgettable group of characters throughout Muddy River as they navigate a moment of profound upheaval. The execution and its fallout bring every sector of society into contact with each other—and every tension between lovers, families, bureaucrats, peasants, and politicians to a breaking point. With care, restraint, and deeply felt emotion, Li attends to the brutality and care that structure life and survival under authoritarian rule.
A tale of the far-reaching consequences of a political prisoner’s execution in the provincial city of Muddy River in China.
A young woman wakes in Muddy River as a political prisoner. A former member of the Red Guard, Gu Shan has been sentenced to death for speaking against the Chinese Communist...
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About the author
Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Wednesday’s Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers—and of nonfiction, Things in Nature Merely Grow and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including a PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Wednesday’s Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers—and of nonfiction, Things in Nature Merely Grow and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in...
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