Pulitzer Prize-winning author Yiyun Li has always been a writer who stares directly into the hardest parts of human experience. Her 2025 memoir, *Things in Nature Merely Grow*, earned the Pulitzer for its unflinching account of losing both of her sons to suicide. Now, in her latest work of fiction, *Music Against the Night*, Li turns her attention to two young prodigies living in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, exploring how extraordinary talent and profound loss can exist side by side.
Li spoke with Fresh Air's Terry Gross about the new novel, the limits of language in the face of tragedy, and why music became a necessary companion when words failed her. The conversation aired on October 13, 2026, and touched on themes that have defined much of Li's recent work: the inadequacy of conventional comfort, the persistence of the past, and the strange consolations of art.
At the heart of Li's perspective is a rejection of the vocabulary typically used to discuss loss. She does not speak of "grief" or the "grieving process," terms that, in her view, falsely suggest an endpoint. The word she prefers is "abyss." For Li, the abyss is not a temporary state to be crossed but a permanent dwelling—a place she expects to inhabit for the rest of her life. This distinction matters deeply to her, because it resists the cultural pressure to heal on a schedule or to frame recovery as a linear journey.
That resistance shapes *Music Against the Night* as well. The novel centers on two child prodigies whose lives unfold against the backdrop of a rapidly changing Europe. By setting the story in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Li creates distance from her own experience while still probing the same raw questions about precocity, vulnerability, and the cost of exceptional gifts. Young geniuses, like the ones she depicts, are often celebrated for what they can produce, yet their inner lives can remain invisible to those around them.
The choice of music as a central motif is not incidental. Li has said that when words fell short—when language could not contain or communicate the depth of her sorrow—music became a way to remain connected to something larger. Music, unlike speech, does not demand resolution. It can hold contradiction, sustain ambiguity, and express what cannot be paraphrased. For a writer whose medium is language, acknowledging its limits is both an act of humility and a creative opening.
Li's memoir already established her as a writer willing to break with the conventions of the grief narrative. Rather than offering uplift or closure, *Things in Nature Merely Grow* presented loss as a condition to be lived with, not overcome. Critics praised its honesty and its refusal to sentimentalize. The Pulitzer Prize confirmed what many readers had already felt: that there is a profound need for stories that do not flinch.
In *Music Against the Night*, Li extends that project into fiction. Historical settings can be liberating for writers dealing with autobiographical material. By moving to the 18th and 19th centuries, Li can explore the dynamics of prodigy and family, ambition and fragility, without the constraints of literal memoir. The novel's title itself suggests a stance: music as a form of resistance against darkness, not a cure for it.
The interview with Gross also touched on the broader question of how art functions in the aftermath of unthinkable loss. Li's answer, as reflected in her choice of words, seems to be that art does not rescue us from the abyss. Instead, it offers companionship within it. Music, in particular, can be present in ways that words cannot—through rhythm, harmony, and the sheer physicality of sound.
Readers who admired Li's memoir will find familiar concerns in the new novel, but they will also encounter a writer expanding her range. The historical novel is a demanding form, requiring research and imagination in equal measure. Li's decision to write about two prodigies suggests an interest in how talent develops under pressure, and how the very qualities that make someone remarkable can also isolate them.
The publication of *Music Against the Night* also comes at a time when conversations about mental health, suicide prevention, and the experience of surviving family members are more visible than ever. NPR's segment included a standard resource note, reminding listeners that the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by calling or texting 988. Li's willingness to speak publicly about her sons' deaths has made her a significant voice in those conversations, even as she resists the language of recovery.
What emerges from Li's recent work is a coherent artistic vision: that honesty about pain is more valuable than reassurance; that language has boundaries; that music and fiction can go where ordinary speech cannot. *Music Against the Night* is not a departure from Li's earlier themes but a deepening of them, translated into a new key.
For readers, the novel offers an opportunity to consider how prodigies are made and broken, how history echoes in private lives, and how art might accompany us through experiences that resist understanding. Li does not promise that music will banish the night. She suggests, instead, that it can be played against it—steadily, insistently, and without illusion.
(0)