Paradoxically, English helped Li develop as a writer by forcing her to focus on making herself understood rather than worrying about words and their arrangement. 'One of the first things I tell my students is that language is the last thing you need to worry about in writing,' she says. 'It's really how you tell the story.'

The characters in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers run the gamut of ordinary Chinese - from children to elderly pensioners, peasants in small villages and urban families - whose fates have been shaped by China's turbulent recent history. The committee for the Frank O'Connor Award called the collection 'brilliant and original', citing the author's 'heartbreaking honesty and ... beautiful prose'. In winning the award - with the largest cash prize ever offered for a book of short stories - Li's work was chosen over 60 other English-language submissions.

Li began writing fiction in English less than nine years ago, after leaving Beijing to begin work on a PhD in immunology at the University of Iowa in Des Moines. 'In Beijing I'd attended a high school for math prodigies,' says Li. 'I'd grown up in a compound for scientists and it was expected that I'd be on a science and maths track. None of the children I knew would have thought about switching to the liberal arts track because it would have been looked down on - as if they'd chosen something inferior. But at that time I didn't feel a conflict because I enjoyed my studies.'

But in her first year at the University of Iowa, Li found herself feeling lonely. 'Grad students in the sciences tend to be scientific in their relationships,' she says. So she enrolled in a creative writing class. 'When the instructor read my first piece she asked me if I'd ever thought about getting published and told me I had to keep writing on my own. Then one summer I took a class at the university's writing programme and the teacher, James McPherson, ended up becoming my mentor. I named my second son after him.'

McPherson had such a thick Georgian accent that Li had difficulty understanding him. 'In that first week I only understood one sentence he said. He had spent a few years in Japan and said that in Asia they still have a community voice, but that we've lost that in American culture because individualism is emphasised.

'Thinking about what he said, I wrote Immortality [which appears in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers] with that community voice. When I showed it to him, McPherson said: 'You are a writer and you should write'.'

From that point, Li began thinking seriously of becoming a writer. Soon she found herself talking with her immunology adviser about switching to the writing programme. 'He was supportive and said I should pursue my dream, but warned me that if I left the field it would be hard to come back. I wasn't sure I was a good writer, but I knew that I did excellent lab work so I was certainly taking a risk.'

She took the risk, entering the Iowa Writer's Workshop in 2001. 'Things happened very fast,' she says. Her stories began appearing in The New Yorker and other prestigious publications, then she was awarded The Paris Review's Plimpton Prize for new writers, and a book contract with Random House followed.

That's not to say things always came easily. Before she began winning prizes, Li had to write from midnight until four in the morning, spending her days working, going to school and caring for the first of her two children. She and her husband, Dapeng Li, a Beijing University classmate, married six years ago.

'He's like me,' she says. 'He was trained in the sciences, but what he really wants to do is study history or paint. But right now, he's a computer scientist.'

Li hasn't experienced the culture shock she'd been warned about. Instead, she's found herself intrigued by the people she has encountered - not all of them friendly.

'I've met racist people, for instance,' she says. 'One of them was a self- proclaimed white supremacist in one of my classes. But once I realised she had the views she had because she came from a poor family where whiteness was all they had, I began to understand her. We're all the same underneath no matter how different our backgrounds are. I really believe that.'

One of the qualities that distinguishes Li's fiction is her ability to bring seemingly uninteresting characters alive. 'You really can't put yourself in a higher position than your readers,' she says. 'You have to be humble. One of my favourite writers is William Trevor. He has humility. As great a writer as he is, he is modest about himself. He doesn't think he's smarter than you are. He treats his characters with respect and tenderness. I learnt from him that a writer should have an open mind and not be judgmental.'

Unlike most writers' debut works, none of the stories in A Thousand Years of Good Prayers appears to be at all autobiographical, nor is there a single character who could be said to resemble Li. 'Young writers usually write about young characters, but I'm drawn towards older characters and characters who have no control over their lives,' she says. 'Also, I don't think I'm very interesting. There are people who are even extras in their own life. I feel I'm one of those, and these are the people I really love.'

Although all of the stories in A Thousand Years take place in contemporary China, Li wonders if Chinese readers will find her stories as compelling as westerners have, since they occur in familiar territory. She's also aware that Chinese readers regard the work of compatriots writing in English as suspect.

'My work isn't very well accepted among my fellow Chinese,' she says. 'People think if you're writing in English you're writing for a western readership. That's not true of course. I'm writing for neither Chinese nor Americans, but for readers who like the kinds of books I do.'

Here Li pauses, then laughs. 'Actually, when I think about some of my favourite English male writers, I don't think they would have imagined a Chinese woman would love their writing so much!'

Author's bookshelf

A Dream of Red Mansions (Hong Lou Meng) by Cao Xueqin

'For me, it's the best of the best books ever written. The first time I read it I was 11. In the past two decades I've read it probably no fewer than 200 times, and it still amazes me every time I open it.'

Any Human Heart by William Boyd

'This is a book of history, about one man's journey through the 20th century, and when I reached the end of the 500-page novel, I wished there were another 500 pages. It's a book about any human being, any human heart, that ever existed in history.'

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

'A masterpiece by a master of writing. This beautiful, perfect novel should be read by everyone who loves literature.'

Other People's Worlds by William Trevor

'One of the many great works by my favourite author, William Trevor. With sympathy for human beings, their flaws and their weakness, Trevor unfolds the most horrible tragedy in a quiet and humble way.'

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

'One of the greatest works published in recent years - it's a novel that 100 years from now people will still read.'

Genre Fiction

Latest book A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Random House, $171)

Age 32

Born Beijing

Lives Oakland, California, with her husband and two sons

What the papers say 'A beautifully executed debut collection. These are powerful stories that encapsulate tidily epic grief and longing.' - Publishers Weekly