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 masterly literary response to the unbearable … joins high intelligence with remarkable emotional restraint, honouring the dead while also insisting on life … I’m in awe’ Salman Rushdie, in TIME
‘A wonderful and extraordinarily wise book … 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
‘An astonishing high-wire act of writing and thinking and mourning … An extraordinary book’ Sarah Moss, author of Ripeness
‘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’ Sinéad Gleeson, The Week
‘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 twelve books of fiction and non-fiction. She is the recipient of many awards, including a Guardian First Book Award, the Sunday Times Short Story Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, an International Writer Award from the Royal Society of Literature, a MacArthur Fellowship and a Windham-Campbell Prize. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Things in Nature Merely Grow is the winner of the 2026 Carnegie Medal for Non-Fiction. It was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Memoir, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction.

In 2026, Li was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

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