Yiyun Li: 'This is my generation. It's what we experienced'

The author of Kinder Than Solitude on Tiananmen Square and the psychological violence people inflict

Yiyun Li, 41, was born in Beijing. After college, she emigrated to the US to study immunology and turned to creative writing. Her first collection of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers , won the 2005 Guardian first book award. Her first novel, The Vagrants was set shortly after the death of Chairman Mao. Her second collection, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl , followed in 2010. Her new novel, Kinder Than Solitude, focuses on three friends, and alternates between 1990s Beijing and present-day America. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and sons, and teaches creative writing at the University of California, Davis.

It's a brilliant device to open a novel with the death of a 43-year-old women who has been in a coma for 20 years. But isn't it inspired by a real-life case the thallium poisoning of a Chinese student, Zhu Ling , in 1995?