Writer Yiyun Li lost both of her sons. When words fell short, she turned to music

Li won a Pulitzer for her memoir about the suicides of her two sons. In her new novel, Music Against the Night , she writes about two young prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

<img src='https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/750x920+0+46/resize/750x920!/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe3%2F23%2Fea5a754d4a5ba207acd1f62ff6c6%2Fyiyun-li-credit-hannah-yoon-1200.jpg' alt='Yiyun Li won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2025 memoir, <em>Things in Nature Merely Grow.</em>'/><p>Li won a Pulitzer for her memoir about the suicides of her two sons. In her new novel, <em>Music Against the Night</em>, she writes about two young prodigies in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.</p><p>(Image credit: Hannah Yoon)</p><img src='https://media.npr.org/include/images/tracking/npr-rss-pixel.png?story=nx-s1-6000124' />