The Vagrants by Yiyun Li 4th Estate, HK$114
Yiyun Li, born in Beijing and now living in the US, had hardly published her first collection of short stories (A Thousand Years of Good Prayers) before she was compared to Chekov and Alice Munro. The Vagrants, her first novel, earned her mentions in the same breath as Tolstoy. That leaves only Shakespeare before Li is crowned the world's greatest writer. In truth, she is talented. The Vagrants opens in the small town of Muddy River. Teacher Gu awakes to find his wife sobbing in bed beside him: it is March 21, 1979 - the day his daughter is to be executed. Loyal to the party, Gu tells his wife: 'Think of today as the day we pay everything off ... The whole debt.' 'What debt?' Gu's wife demands. 'What do we owe?' The condemned girl, Gu Shan, has long since become a mystery to her father. Rebellious by nature, she was imprisoned as a counter-revolutionary and sentenced to death when her diary was discovered to be full of criticism of Mao. Li's story follows the various characters who gather to watch the execution. The resulting portrait of betrayal, violence and corruption is shocking in its clarity. No one is spared and everyone is complicit, Li suggests. Shakespearean indeed.