Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life

Reveals, gloriously, the companionship, intimacy, and insight that can come from obsession with the written word

LA Review of Books

Literature, the clash of public and private, human nature itself-these subjects and more are explored with remarkable subtlety and rare, limpid mental beauty. A must-read for anyone trying to stay sane in a world that might be perceived as insane

Mary Gaitskill, author of The Mare

Weaving sharp literary criticism with a perceptive narrative about her life as an immigrant in America

The Millions

An intimate memoir of darkest despair... A potent journey of depression that effectively testifies to unbearable pain and the consolation of literature

Kirkus

Quietly forceful, unrelenting... She unfolds an argument with the self, suspicious of the very concept , but not, ultimately, refuse its possibilities

Eula Biss

Novelistic scenes, limpid prose, subtly moving emotion... Personal reminiscences [and] literary meditations... Li explores ruptures in time, the difficulty of writing autobiographical fiction, the pleasures of melodrama

Publisher’s Weekly

A remarkable account of literary life [from] an important and gifted writer... Her new book is a meditation on the fact that literature itself lives and gives life

Marilynne Robinson

Extraordinary. A storyteller of the first order

Junot Diaz

A work of arresting revelations...A writer of meticulous reasoning, probing sensitivity, candor, and poise, Li parses mental states with psychological and philosophical precision in a beautifully measured and structured style born of both her scientific and literary backgrounds.

Booklist

Beautiful and profound... This book is a terribly beautiful gift to the reader

Neel Mukherjee, New Statesman

Exceptional... one of our major novelists

Salman Rushdie

Li celebrates the authors who make reading a joyous pursuit, and the details that've made her own life worth living.

Huffington Post

Publisher's description. A luminous memoir from the award-winning author of The Vagrants and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is the record of a life lived with books and a richly affirming examination of what makes any life worth living.

Penguin

Yiyun has the talent, the vision and the respect for life's insoluble mysteries... [she] is the real deal

Michel Faber