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The Vagrants
The Vagrants
The Vagrants
Audiobook11 hours

The Vagrants

Written by Yiyun Li

Narrated by Jackie Chung

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

Yiyun Li is the winner of the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Vagrants, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance. "Li records these events . with such a magisterial sense of direction that the reader can't help being drawn into the novel."-Publishers Weekly, starred review
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 15, 2010
ISBN9781440774140
The Vagrants
Author

Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Must I Go, Where Reasons End, Kinder Than Solitude, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, The Vagrants, and Gold Boy, Emerald Girl—and the memoir Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham-Campbell Prize. Her work has also appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University.

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Reviews for The Vagrants

Rating: 3.869230692820513 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is a story of ordinary Chinese citizens in 1979, China. A year in which people are still getting used to the Communist regime after the break-up of the Cultural Revolution. Those who were staunch Red Guards during the rule Mao have been take care of and anyone still harbouring those or any feelings other than communism are antirevolutionists. The book opens upon the day that the Gu's daughter, Shan, now 28 after spending 10 years in prison for her actions during the rule of Mao is to be executed for her writings found in her diary in her cell.The story is mostly one of the characters who knew Gu Shan, those affected by either her life or her death, and those who live upon her street. It is a story of the horrors of political indoctrination, crimes against the people, ordinary people trying to live their lives, and of love. Love, both gone sour from years of hardship and burning romance between two very unlikely people.What a beautiful book! Very well written, continuously moving from one character's experiences to an other's. A slow-paced plot, the book encompasses only one year, buta moving look into the minds of various Chinese mindsets from traditional superstition to staunch communist to fierce activists. I loved every one of the eclectic characters but especially Nini and Bashi, two young people who slowly become more and more the main focus as the book progresses.I love reading about China and this brief period of the seventies is one that, historically, I haven't read of before. I found it fascinating as well as tragic and heart-wrenching. While slow-paced as mentioned above, it is not a slow read and I found myself turning pages as fast as I could. By no means a happy story but a dark and heart-rending one with glimpses of hope.This is the author's first novel, having previously published an award winning collection of short stories, and I most certainly will be keeping an eye out for her next one. Highly recommended especially to those who enjoy character driven novels.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Vagrants is the reaction of a series of people to the hanging of a woman dubbed as a counterrevolutionary. It's a very complexley spun book, particularly in the characters. Every character in this book is painfully and darkly human, and all of them in moment that show them at their worst. It's so heart breakingly well written and complex, but I did really struggle to read it because it's also so dark. Many of these characters have no redeaming qualities, it's like a mirror held up to the absolute worst face of humanity and thus it's not entirely plesant to look in.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Harsh beginning. On the first page we learn that a young woman charged with being a counterrevolutionary in Communist china will die that day. "Everybody dies" is the refrain of a father too afraid of the consequences to mourn in the traditional manner. The execution of 28-year-old Gu Shan is the center around which the inhabitants of Muddy River go about their joyless existence.This desolate cast of characters starts out being a jumble of names, but personalities emerge and become real people. Like anywhere else in time or place, individuals can be ignorant, depraved, and sometimes courageous. Author Yiyun Li introduces the reader to all these types and more in this look into China's political history.There is great intensity in this grim book. Just don't expect relief from the tragedy of a dark story of fear and repression.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Adult fiction. Surprisingly effective debut novel about the repercussions of a young woman's execution in a smallish town in China during the Cultural Revolution. Tells not only the story of the mother and father of the punished "counterrevolutionary" but also the neighbors, the neglected girl, the lonely child, the town idiot, and many others--each story is engrossing in its own way.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book was rough. I expected the characters to be outcasts, as the title suggests, but they were mostly just terrible people. I'm sure it shared stories that needed to be told, but I personally didn't find the cold writing style effective.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's 1979, Chairman Mao has been dead for a few years, and a counter-revolution is bubbling up. In the provincial city of Muddy River, the citizens are called to a ceremony to denounce one of their own, a young woman named Gu Shan, prior to her execution, for counter-revolutionary activities. Shan had already been tried once and sentenced to jail time, but her retrial several years later ended with a death sentence. Dragged onstage by two guards, she appears frail and almost catatonic, her throat covered with bloody bandages. We learn that her vocal cords have been cut to prevent her from making a public statement. Later we learn that this is not the only horror she experiences: her kidneys were harvested for transplant into a party leader (the actual reason for her retrial and death sentence), and her body is brutally desecrated after her execution.Shan's life and death stand at the center of this novel as the author reveals the effect on the people of Muddy River. There are her parents, Teacher Gu and his wife; the Huas, a childless vagrant couple who has taken in abandoned girls, only to have them snatched away by government plans; Nini, a 12-year old born with a deformed face, hand, and leg, the unloved third daughter in a family of six girls; Bashi, a spoiled, socially awkward outcast teenager with a history of pestering little girls; Tong, a young boy who dreams of winning the red scarf and becoming a party hero; Wu Kai, beautiful former actress, now a news reader who is assigned to speak at the denunciation ceremony; and her adoring husband, Wu Han, a rising government official who has gotten a boost from his parents, prominent party members. All of these people are in some way touched by Gu Shan and her tragic ending, their individual stories all in some way overlapping. Her parents, of course, suffer the greatest loss, and their marriage is tested as Teacher Gu tries to get on with life and follow the rules while his wife's grief propels her towards reckless decisions. Others whose crimes may be as slight as having been in the wrong place at the wrong time suffer the same (or worse) consequences as those organizing a protest denouncing Gu Shan's fate.This is not an easy read. Yijun Li does an incredible job of depicting the constant state of paranoia in which citizens of Communist China lived, never quite sure who to trust or what they could or could not say. It's a cruel reminder of the dehumanization of totalitarian regimes, and a reminder to us all of how lucky we are to live in a democracy and that we must be vigilant to preserve it in the face of radical political ideologies.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An intriguing portrait of life in the aftermath of China's cultural revolution. The general poverty and grimness is interesting enough, but the most fascinating parts deal with how the elite live in constant fear of being suddenly forced out - or worse - in the musical chairs of Chinese politics.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A long, dense tale of poverty and brutality in 1970s China, this was educational for me as I hadn't realised there were different hues of red governing that country during the 1960s and 70s and which one you supported was a big deal. I liked its readability, in that it set things out in terms I could understand whereas other novels concerning China's politics and culture have tended to wander off into the surreal and lose me entirely.It's not an uplifting story. It starts miserable, ends miserable, and the bit in the middle is none too cheerful either. But it's thought provoking . It reminded me a lot of both 1984 and Alone in Berlin, both of which depict people living under an oppressive regime. You get a clear feeling of how unnatural it is to the human state to live in such conditions, but in particular when we got to the bit where the children are singing songs about how fantastic their lives are thanks to 'the Party' when they are living in such grinding misery, how people can be conditioned and controlled by a powerful regime.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In the late 1970's in Muddy River, China, a young woman, Shan, is executed for being a counter-revolutionary. The Vagrants portrays the effect her execution has on a diverse cast of vividly drawn, mostly sympathetic characters.For Shan's parents, Teacher Gu and Mrs. Gu, their daughter's execution results in a reversal of their roles, as Mrs. Gu takes a more activist role to try to make sense of their daughter's senseless death. The unwitting actions of Tong, a lonely and bewildered seven year old boy searching for his missing dog, cause his father to be beaten into a vegetative state by the state authorities. Kai, a celebrity radio announcer who lives a privileged life, risks everything, including her infant son, to expose the injustice of Shan's death; Kai's husband Han is the party official who arranged for the removal of Shan's kidneys while she was still alive for transplant to an elderly dignatary. The vagrants of the title are Mr. and Mrs. Hua who have settled in Muddy River to earn their living as street sweepers and trash collectors for recycle. Over the years, they rescued seven unwanted female babies who had been abandoned to die, and raised them as their own daughters, until one day the state decided they were unsuitable parents and removed the girls from the Hua's home.This may sound like just a soap opera with an exotic setting. It's not. These, and the many other characters we meet, are deeply and truly drawn. Their stories are very real and the conditions of daily life in China at the time appear to be authentically drawn. This is a beautiful, but sad, book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This novel is set in 1979 provincial China, at a time when the Democratic Wall Movement in Beijing was gaining momentum in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. As the book open the residents of Muddy River are preparing for the denunciation rally and execution of local counter-revolutionary Gu Shan. Several different family units are connected by this one woman: Teacher Gu and Mrs Gu (Gu Shan’s parents), the Huas (vagrant beggars who have taken in orphaned girls in the past), Bashi (a sociopathic outcast), Nini (a 12-year-old girl who was born with a deformed hand and foot), Tong (a young boy who is eager to learn), Jailin (the tubercular leader of the underground movement), Wu Kai (the state’s beautiful and charismatic radio announcer) and her husband Wu Han (son of politically connected parents).

    Li has crafted a work that is both disturbing and luminous. She weaves the threads of these individuals into a fabric of a nation in turmoil. Whom to trust? When to lie? How to survive – spiritually, emotionally, and physically? The stories of these residents of Muddy River depict courage, sacrifice, cunning, fear, survival, and love. There are some truly horrific scenes of depravity and violence here. But there are also scenes of tenderness and caring.

    I can’t say that I “liked” the book – it’s too disturbing for that. But I’m glad I read it, and I’ll be thinking about it for a long time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Post-Mao Communist China. 1979. A small provincial town of Muddy River. A story of people who, except for a tiny minority of free thinkers, don't mind succumbing to the brainwashing of Communist propaganda, modelled after the Soviet totalitarian system. But where the Soviets hid their dirty business by as late as 1979 (sending dissidents to remote labor camps and psychiatric hospitals) the Chinese did horrifying things: public denunciation ceremonies, executions, etc. - all in all, cruel crushing of the burgeoning (and peaceful in this case) free thought, or as officials called it - "cleansing of Muddy River" (poignant choice of the town's name by the author). The author is very good at capturing the behavior of the common provincial men, women and children, most of them barely educated, with their human flaws exposed. The top crust of the society is hardly mentioned, but its hypocritic existence is implied: "...to climb up in this country, you'd have to use someone else as a stepping stone". An eye opener of a special kind. And yes, I agree with the last reviewer - it's grim...
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Vagrants by Yiyun Li is a powerful story set during the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution in China, as the Democracy Wall was erected in Beijing and how one girl's death in a rural town serves as a catalyst for a nascent democracy movement of their own.

    Li creates many believable and fully-realised characters to populate her rural town and she develops each one as their stories occasionally overlap owing to the execution of a counter-revolutionary; it is this execution that galvanises the town into action but at the same time causes brutal repression and arrests. The atmosphere after the Cultural Revolution, during the Democracy Movement, is expertly captured in The Vagrants and the grim realities of standing up for what you believe in - the human cost - is addressed.

    Powerful but ultimately grim, the novel details well life with oppression interspersed with some humour, even when the conclusion is foregone.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Utterly absorbing, and so very very creepy and sad.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This is not an easy book to read in the sense that the post-Mao Chinese village in which the characters live is brutal and depressing. The rhythm in Li’s storytelling, however, somehow kept me going. The complex main characters don’t make it easy for readers to love them or hate them. In one scene, they’re acting out a kindness yet in another scene, they’re exacting such cruelty; you feel as if you have them pinned down, and then they do something that astonishes you. The scope is small, focusing on these specific characters, but there’s also a sense of something bigger than all of them at play. Nothing is obvious or preachy. It’s all pretty devastating and you rue the unfairness of life. I’m astonished that not only is English not the author’s native language, but she acquired it only as an adult. She expresses things so exquisitely. I was waffling between 2 or 3 stars. I went with 2 stars at the end because even though I respect the book, I didn’t emotionally connect with the novel as whole.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Told through the eyes of the townspeople on the day of Shan’s execution for being a political dissident, Li provides a vivid and condemning picture of China’s post-Maoist era.All the characters are sharply drawn, their personalities are strong and varied. They are alive on the page: the good (Teacher Gu, Shan’s father); the not so good, a sexual pervert who lures a hapless girl crippled by birth defects to his side; Kai, the broadcast personality blessed with a perfect but dull husband and her lover -- they both tremble on the verge of dissident activism.The story is about their interaction and reaction to Shan's execution and reading it, I was caught up in the narrative to the point that I felt like a member of that village. It’s impossible for me to know, but I feel an authenticity in this depiction of that period of modern Chinese history. As fiction it also rings true. The reader feels like she is “living under the volcano” as socio-political tension seems to be mounting toward another revolution. But it’s a tension countered by a lassitude that also makes the reader feel that nothing will happen to change their suffering because the grip of oppression is too strong and has crushed their characters.Perhaps that's intentional as the author tries to convey the atmosphere of living under a repressive regime and how it utterly debilitates both the personal and communal ability to change it.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    5 stars! A stunning novel. Takes place in China in the late 1970s. A young woman is to be executed for her ideologic opposition to the oppressive cultural revolution. It is about humans being human — what people do and say to protect their own interests — but they all believe in different ways to accomplish this. Some believe it is best to go along with whatever they’re told, to be obedient at all costs. But even this is not a sureproof method. Others believe they must stand up to oppression, to speak out against. Others try to manipulate the system, and their fellow citizens. They are all powerless and yet all wield a segment of the power. Their actions are part of the web.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    At the end of her first novel, Yiyun Li provides a note about her childhood in China. During the late 1970's and early 1980's, execution announcements were frequently hung in the marketplace, providing Yiyun Li with an opportunity to practice her reading. The announcements often included a short description of the crime, and as she notes, "it was an awareness that the life and story of a real person could not be summarized in one paragraph on an execution announcement, along with other memories, that began my journey to the writing of The Vagrants" (p. 349). If her goal was to give voice to a life, Yiyun Li has succeeded beautifully. The Vagrants begins with the execution announcement of Yu Shan, the daughter of a teacher and his wife who avidly supported the Communist regime and then become a counterrevolutionary in the small village of Muddy River. Yiyun Li weaves together the stories of several residents of Muddy River who are impacted by the execution. She provides a richly detailed account of several weeks in this small town, and at the same time provides insight into the broader political upheaval during this period in Chinese history.The characters in this novel are richly textured. At times, the small decisions that they make after Gu Shan's execution have far-reaching implications. At other times, I felt that any decision that they made was futile, given the tight control maintained by the government. They exhibit vastly different loyalties - some remaining loyal to the government, others joining the counterrevolutionaries, and others just trying to survive and support their families. Li makes it clear that there are no easy decisions in Muddy River and in the end, there is no sense of resolution, just the continuation of the lives of very real people. I highly recommend this book. And, I wouldn't be a proud resident of Iowa City if I didn't note that Yiyun Li is another of the talented graduates of the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Vagrants is a novel about poorer villiagers in China in the 1970s. It's told in a somewhat jerky fashion - each of the lives of a character in focus intersects with the lives of the others, living as they do physically close to one another. But those intersections are often superficial, and the transition between focuses can feel abrupt at times. Overall, I found the book well-paced and reasonably engaging, but nothing that really stood out from the crowd.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Agree that this is a powerful novel; some of the characters do or witness things that may be difficult to read, but nonetheless, it is powerful. Li's prose is limitless in its possibilities, and very promising.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The blurb compares Li's prose to Tolstoy's. On reading the first chapter I thought that the hyperbole might, for once, be deserved. It introduces the central characters of the novel, belonging to a single town in 1970s China, with real skill and poise. The rest of the novel doesn't quite live up to this promise, perhaps because the focus is often on characters that do not have sufficiently interesting interior lives to offer. Nonetheless, it is a powerful novel, particularly given the social and economic transformation of China over the past 20 years.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In The Vagrants, Yiyun Li brings to life the Chinese provincial city of Muddy River in the years just following the Cultural Revolution. The characters, Tong, an innocent seven-year-old boy, Nini, a deformed and unloved twelve-year-old girl, Bashi, an idle young man mocked by his neighbors, The Huas, a poor, elderly couple, Teacher Gu, a dispirited intellectual, and Kai, a beautiful news announcer with politically connected in-laws, are all tied together by the death of counterrevolutionary, Gu Shan. The execution of Gu Shan, a less than admirable heroine, is timed to coincide with a high ranking Communist official’s need for a kidney transplant. The townspeople need to gauge the current political tides to understand the safest way to react to the execution. Li’s dark prose portrays the struggle and uncertainties of life in 1970s China.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Raw and powerful. This is definitely an author to watch - she writes in a sparse style that is both raw and powerful. Her characters are varied and strong, interacting with one another in constantly interconnecting circles. The build-up of the narrative was excellent, leading us inexorably to the final denouement.The book is set in 1979, after the death of Mao. It is based around a factual event - the denunciation and execution of 28 year old Gu-Shan, who has been accused of counterrevolutionary activity and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment followed by death. This event affected many people in the town of Muddy River - from Shan's parents through to the radio announcer responsible for whipping up the crowds, to a young, deformed girl who unknowingly watches while the Shan's vocal chords are cut to prevent her from speaking out. As the ripples travel further, other residents of the town become drawn in. A movement to clear Shan's name begins to build momentum and the fall-out from this has far reaching effects.Recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a tragic and bleak novel. It is a bleak picture of human nature -- a story in which almost every person has had any sense of moral code and humanity erased by the physical and psychological hardships they endure under the cultural revolution. The one elderly couple who have not lost their humanity in all this have probably not done so simply because they essentially have nothing further to lose -- they have already lost all the abandoned baby girls they gave a home to and are always ready and expecting to return to an itinerant, wandering life. The book is, however, gripping and very well written -- the characters are complex and, even when not likeable are compelling and real. Their stories are very plausible. An excellent book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A beautifully written story of what happens to individuals in a repressive regime. I will read this novel again, after I have learned more about the Cultural Revolution and the counterrevolution in China. Highly recommended, although it's not always an easy read.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This novel is set in a small city created as a Communist outpost settlement during the Cultural Revolution. The time of the novel is 1979, when the Communist party was turning away from Mao and the revolution, yet still holding a tight grip on the lives of the people.The critical event in the novel is the execution of Shan Gu...a27 year old woman who was once a fervent supporter of the cultural revolution then began to think differently and wrote against it in letters to a lover who betrayed her. Hence her execution as a counter revolutionary.The author creates the story by braiding the strands of several lives in this small town which are connected through the life and actions of Shan Gu. There are many themes her: personal and political, moral ambiguity, love and betrayal, what makes a family. The book is beautifully written. One must read to the end to begin to understand the title.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This story takes place back in the seventies. A time when China was dealing with the Tiananmen Square uprising. The Gu family was like any other family. They lived good quiet lives in the town of Muddy River. That all changed ten years ago. The Gu’s daughter, Gu Shan, a free spirit was raised like anyone else in the beliefs of Communism and China’s leader, Chairman Mao. Shan started thinking for herself and renounced her beliefs in communism. Shan was taken away. That was ten years ago. During that time Shan sat in a cell never backing down from what she believed in. Shan’s arrest tore Mr. and Mrs. Gu apart. Mrs. Gu loved her daughter and never gave up hope that she would see here again some day. This was the complete opposite for Mr. Gu. He had already committed himself in coming to the reality that he no longer had a daughter. Having never read anything by Mrs. Li, I didn’t know what to expect when I sat down to read The Vagrants. Let me tell you if you thought the cover was gorgeous then you are in for a great surprise. Yiyun Li incorporates her life experiences with enduring, heart-felt characters to end up with a finished product that is so spectacular that it is almost had to describe. I was honestly and truly spellbound by the simplicity of what we take for granted…our freedom. Shan fights for the same thing, only she is prosecuted for her efforts but was willing to die for them if the need arised. The Vagrants is one of the best books I have read thus far in 2009.