Yiyun Li

Where Reasons End is an intimate, deeply moving novel about a mother’s grief following the death of her teenage son, Nikolai. Unable to accept his absence, the narrator imagines a series of conversations with him in a world suspended between life and death. Through their exchanges, mother and son revisit memories, question language, discuss literature, and reflect on the complexities of their relationship. Rather than offering simple explanations for an unbearable loss, Yiyun Li explores the limits of understanding and the ways words can both connect people and fail to express what matters most. Their conversations move between tenderness, humour, frustration, and sorrow, revealing the ordinary details that make a relationship unique. Written in the aftermath of the author’s own loss, the novel blurs the boundaries between fiction and personal experience. It is a profound meditation on motherhood, grief, memory, and the enduring bond between a parent and a child.

Set against the political and cultural upheavals of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Yiyun Li’s sweeping historical novel follows two gifted musicians whose ambitions take them across continents. John Field, born in Dublin in 1782, is a musical prodigy whose father dreams of making him the next Mozart. His talent carries him from Ireland to England, France, and eventually Russia, where he becomes a celebrated pianist and composer. He helps popularize the nocturne, a musical form later associated most famously with Frédéric Chopin. Meanwhile, in Pondicherry, French India, Adelaide Percheron—an orphan raised by her formidable grandmother—discovers her own passion for music. Determined to escape the limitations imposed by her circumstances, she pursues opportunities in Paris and Moscow, striving to build a life beyond the expectations placed upon women of her time. When their paths eventually converge, John and Adelaide must navigate the complexities of marriage, artistic ambition, and competing desires. Through their intertwined lives, Li examines the price of genius, the exploitation of talent, and the fragile boundary between artistic achievement and personal fulfilment. The novel asks what artists must sacrifice for recognition—and whether their work can outlive the people who create it.