Kinder Than Solitude

At the core of Kinder Than Solitude, Yiyun Li's starkly beautiful novel, is a mysterious poisoning that bears a striking resemblance to the 1995 case of Zhu Ling, a Tsinghua University student who was dosed with high levels of the heavy metal thallium. She was given Prussian blue, an antidote that kept her alive, but she sustained serious permanent neurological damage. Zhu Ling still cannot speak, is largely paralyzed and almost blind.