The Vagrants

Yiyun Li · b. 1972 · China / United States

Why it matters

An entire provincial Chinese town is exposed through the days surrounding a young dissident's public execution, neighbors and officials alike implicated in small acts of complicity or rare decency. Li's first novel renders 1970s China's machinery of denunciation with unsparing, clear-eyed precision.

At a glance

A large ensemble cast across one town demands tracking many intersecting, morally compromised lives.