Things in Nature Merely Grow

Praise for Things in Nature Merely Grow:

‘An extraordinary, powerful, candid and intellectually confident book’ Baillie Gifford Prize Judges

‘To state that this courageous book is a testament to love is an understatement. One is left altered by it’ Observer

‘An unforgettable monument to endurance, one that offers a kind of fierce comfort’ Sunday Times

‘A meditation on living and radical acceptance that has the potential to offer deep solace; comfort from the abyss’ Guardian

‘A memoir unlike others, strange and profound and fiercely determined not to look away’ New York Times

‘A wonderful and extraordinarily wise book …The nearest comparison is Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking, which it matches. The best book I have read this year’ David Nicholls, author of You Are Here

‘A book that has not a single spare word in it, that never relies on a cliché, that never resorts to how [Li] is supposed to feel … I loved it so much’ Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake

‘A formidable testament to a mother’s love … one of the most important books to be published in years’ Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton

‘A beautiful, unsentimental book that offers some understanding of coping with devastating loss’ Douglas Stuart, author of John of John

‘One of the most astounding memoirs I have ever read … Li is a truly original thinker’ Pandora Sykes, author of How Do We Know We’re Doing It Right?

‘A manifesto of living, not dying, and of how we endure the most unimaginable things’ Sinéad Gleeson, The Week

‘An astonishing high-wire act of writing and thinking and mourning … An extraordinary book’ Sarah Moss, author of Ripeness

‘A book unlike any I’ve read, that brims with rare clarity and intelligence, with love and care’ Cecile Pin, author of Celestial Lights

‘I don’t think I’ve ever read a more truthful or humane book … I will return to it for the rest of my life’ Charlotte Wood, author of Stone Yard Devotional

Yiyun Li is the author of eight works of fiction and two memoirs. She is the recipient of many awards, including a Guardian First Book Award, the Sunday Times Short Story Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, an International Writer Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a MacArthur Fellowship and a Windham-Campbell Prize, and she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Things In Nature Merely Grow was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2025 and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.