Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li

LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2025 `The best book I have read this year' DAVID NICHOLLS `Beautiful' DOUGLAS STUART `Extraordinary' SARAH MOSS `A formidable testament to a mother's love' SARA COLLINS `There is no good way to say this,' Yiyun Li writes at the beginning of this book. `There is no good way to state these facts, which must be acknowledged. My husband and I had two children and lost them both: Vincent in 2017, at sixteen, James in 2024, at nineteen. Both chose suicide, and both died not far from home.' There is no good way to say this - because words fall short. In this remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance, Li turns to thinking and searching for words that might hold a place for her son, James. Li does `the things that work': including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano, and living thinkingly alongside death. Things in Nature Merely Grow is a testament to Li's indomitable spirit. Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non-Fiction 2026 Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Awards 2025 Finalist for the National Book Award for Non-Fiction 2025 `To state that this courageous book is a testament to love is an understatement. One is left altered by it' Observer `Unlike any other book I've read . an unforgettable monument to endurance' Sunday Times `A book that has not a single spare word in it . I loved it so much' Ann Patchett, author of Tom Lake `A meditation on living and radical acceptance' Guardian `A memoir unlike others, strange and profound and fiercely determined not to look away' New York Times `One of the most astounding memoirs I have ever read' Pandora Sykes, author of How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? `I will return to it for the rest of my life' Charlotte Wood, author of Stone Yard Devotional `A manifesto of living, not dying' Sin?ad Gleeson, The Week
Binding: Paperback / softback