Wednesday's Child

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2024''Any book by Yiyun Li is a cause for celebration'' SIGRID NUNEZ''One of our finest living authors'' NEW YORK TIMES''Bruising, beautiful'' GUARDIANA dazzling new collection of short stories written over a decade, spanning loss, alienation, ageing and the strangeness of contemporary life – from Yiyun Li, the prize-winning author of The Book of GooseA grieving mother makes a spreadsheet of everyone she’s lost. A professor develops a troubled intimacy with her hairdresser. And every year, a restless woman receives an email from a strange man twice her age and several states away. In Yiyun Li’s stories, people strive for an ordinary existence until doing so becomes unsustainable, until the surface cracks and grand mysterious forces – death, violence, estrangement – come to light. And even everyday life is laden with meaning, studded with indelible details: a filched jar of honey, a mound of wounded ants, a photograph kept hidden for many