Yiyun Li Longlist Interview
23 September 2025
Things in Nature Merely Grow
Yiyun Li
'There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.'
There is no good way to say this – because words fall short. It takes only an instant for death to become fact, 'a single point in a timeline'. Living now on this single point, Li turns to thinking and reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for James. Li does what she can: including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death. This is a book for James, but it is not a book about grieving. Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li’s indomitable spirit.
- Published by:
- Fourth Estate Ltd, HarperCollins Publishers
What the judges said“Yiyun Li’s memoir, written after the loss of two teenage sons, is unlike any other book on the list. She writes beautifully - precise, thoughtful and thought provoking. It's an extraordinary, powerful, candid and intellectually confident book.”
About the author
Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction. She is the recipient of many awards, including a Guardian First Book Award, 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 she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey