The Book of Goose is a novel published by Yiyun Li in 2022. The novel tells the story of two teenage girls in France dealing with a Europe completely transformed by the events of World War II. Agnès and Fabienne grow up within the sort of carefree independence that comes one of the consequences of chaos. The two girls conceive a private game for themselves composing stories about their experiences in post-war France. These writings eventually result in success in the publishing world for Agnès while Fabienne remains at home living the simple life of a farm girl.
Yiyun Li was born in China in 1972 before resettling in the United States in 1996. She admits to having only made short, infrequent trips to the setting of her novel. Since the setting of post-war France is essential to the tale, she turned to friend and fellow author Edmund White who lived in France where he was eventually honored as a Chevalier. White read the manuscript before Li submitted it for publication to assist with filling in the factual and historical gaps in her knowledge of the setting of the story. Since it is not technically a historical novel and is written from the perspective of a young character who would herself not be overly knowledgeable about certain aspects of that time, however, Li has asserted that writing a story set in a time and place with which she has limited engagement was never a major obstacle to the actual storytelling.
In 2023, The Book of Goose won the prestigious PEN/Faulkner given annually to outstanding work of fiction by an American permanent resident. It was also longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. The book was selected for inclusion on lists of the best novels of 2022 by a variety of periodicals including The New Yorker and Time Magazine.
