Orange Award for New Writers
by Maxine
Yiyun-Li's first collection of stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers is one of the recipients of the Orange Award for New Writers. In the title story, an old man from China tells his new friend, an Iranian woman, of the gulf he's tried to bridge with his daughter from whom he's been estranged for many years. Ironically, even with the language barrier, he's able to communicate more effectively with her than with his own flesh and blood. Other stories also speak to the dislocation of the Chinese both in their own country and in America after the ravages of the Cultural Revolution.
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