Brilliant and original, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers illuminates how mythology, history, and culture intersect with personality to create fate. From the bustling heart of Beijing to a fast-food restaurant in Chicago to the barren expanse of Inner Mongolia, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers reveals worlds both foreign and familiar, with heartbreaking honesty and in beautiful prose. "Immortality," winner of The Paris Review Plimpton Prize, tells the story of a young man who bears a striking resemblance to a dictator and so finds a calling to immortality. In "Extra," the friendship between a lonely Chinese woman and a young boy reveals how love can overcome political and personal repression. In "The Princess of Nebraska," a man and a woman, both in exile, met at a Chicago restaurant and reminisced about a young actor they had both been in love in Beijing. "After A Life" illuminates the vagaries of marriage, parenthood, and gender, unfolding a story of a couple who keeps a daughter hidden from the world for twenty-eight years. These and other stories form a mesmerizing tapestry of revelatory fiction by an unforgettable writer.