4th Estate lands 'remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance' from Yiyun Li

4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins, has landed a "remarkable, defiant work of radical acceptance" from Pulitzer Prize finalist and 2024 Booker Prize judge Yiyun Li.

Publishing director Kishani Widyaratna acquired UK and Commonwealth volume rights, including audio, to Things in Nature Merely Grow from Sarah Chalfant at The Wylie Agency to be published in May 2025. North American rights have been acquired by Mitzi Angel at FSG.

In Li’s new non-fiction book, she considers the loss of her son James as she turns to "thinking, reasoning and searching for words that might hold a place for him".

The synopsis continues: "Li does what she can: including not just writing but gardening, reading Camus and Wittgenstein, learning the piano and living thinkingly alongside death. Things in Nature Merely Grow emerges as a stunning testament to Li’s indomitable spirit."

Widyaratna said: "This is a deeply moving, profoundly searching and powerful book. It feels utterly unique to Yiyun Li, one of our greatest living writers, to be able to weave a work of such clarity of thought out of this unfathomable experience. It is an honour for all of us at 4th Estate to publish Things in Nature Merely Grow."

Her previous work includes Wednesday’s Child, The Book of Goose and Where Reasons End. Her accolades include the Guardian First Book Award, the Sunday Times Short Story Award, a Windham-Campbell prize, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, a Guggenheim fellowship and the 2022 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.