The novel takes place in 1979, a time Li and her husband still vividly remember.
I think he broke my heart, but I had to forgive him." but he also did all these horrible things. What he wanted most was for people to love him, and to acknowledge that he loved people. "It is too easy to explain his whole character as ‘pedophile.' In the end, he was a really sweet guy.
In answering some of these questions the author created the complicated and controversial character Bashi, a young, sexually curious "good-for-nothing." Hughes explained that reviews have called Bashi a "pedophile," but Li disagrees with such a one-dimensional categorization. What kind of people would fail to bury their daughter? What kind of person would mutilate a dead body, and what kind of person would report the mutilation? Li described how she begins a story by asking questions and builds her characters from there. The Vagrants has been praised for the depth and complexity of its characters. "I think people on the edge, in the end, contribute as much to history as people in the center." "I think from early on my interest in fiction is not the center of the action, I'm much more interested with people on the edge of society," Li explained. Li was fascinated by the difference in the deaths of these two women and wanted to explore how the community as a whole was influenced by the events. The town held a protest on her behalf, and soon after the female organizer of the protest was also executed. Li explained that The Vagrants, which takes place in a Chinese rural village two years after the death of Mao Zedong, was inspired by the real case of a condemned woman whose kidneys were removed before, and body mutilated after, her execution. Highlights of the conversation included Li's characterization techniques, how her personal experience has colored her writing, and her unlikely journey from immunologist to novelist. NEW YORK, Febru– Critically acclaimed Chinese novelist Yiyun Li ( A Thousand Years of Good Prayers) and editor Brigid Hughes ( A Public Space) sat down at the Asia Society to discuss Li's new novel The Vagrants.
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