The Pulitzer Prize–winning author discusses music, travel, grief, and ambition—subjects at the heart of her new novel.

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Yiyun Li’s latest book is Music Against the Night. In Dublin, as the 18th century nears its end, a young virtuoso named John Field comes of age as his family nurtures visions of him becoming the next Mozart. His talent takes him to England, France, and Russia, where he becomes a famous pianist and composes dreamy, languorous melodies that enchant the night air. John calls them nocturnes, but the prodigy who immortalizes them is Chopin. Oceans away in French India, Adelaide Percheron has a startling rise of her own. Orphaned and raised by her grandmother, Adelaide is driven by her secret love of music and a desire to see the world. She engineers her exodus, escaping to Paris and later to Moscow, as Napoleon’s army sets out to conquer the continent. As John and Adelaide each try to chart a path between talent and genius, success and legacy, profit and passion, they must decide what, and even who, is worth sacrificing along the way.

Li talks with Jennifer Egan about depicting two aspiring musicians in pursuit of success and bringing to life the sweep and dimension of the Romantic era.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Yiyun Li is the author of several works of fiction—Wednesday’s Child; The Book of Goose; Must I Go; Where Reasons End; Kinder Than Solitude; Gold Boy, Emerald Girl; The Vagrants; and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers—and the memoirs Things in Nature Merely Grow and Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life. She is the recipient of many awards, including the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for memoir, a PEN/Faulkner Award, a PEN/Malamud Award, a PEN/Hemingway Award, a PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and a Windham–Campbell Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, among other publications. She teaches at Princeton University and lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Jennifer Egan is the author of several novels and a short story collection. Her 2017 novel, Manhattan Beach, a New York Times bestseller, was awarded the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was chosen as New York City’s One Book One New York read. Her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was recently named one of the best books of the decade by TIME Magazine and Entertainment Weekly and one of the best books of the 21st Century by The New York Times Book Review. Her most recent novel, The Candy House, a companion to A Visit From the Goon Squad, was named one of the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2022 and one of President Obama’s favorite reads of the year.

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ACCESSIBILITY

In-Person | Assistive listening devices and/or hearing loops are available at the venue. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation or CART (Communication Access Real-Time Translation) captioning service at least two weeks in advance of the event: please submit your request via this form. This venue is fully accessible to wheelchairs. 

Livestream | Captions and a transcript will be provided. Media used over the course of the conversation will be accompanied by alt text and/or audio description. You can request a free ASL (American Sign Language) interpretation at least two weeks in advance of the event: please submit your request via this form.

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Yiyun Li © Basso Cannarsa Agence Opale