A Sheltered Woman
By Yiyun Li
Winner of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Prize
Auntie Mei is a live-in nanny for newborns and their mothers. She has worked for a hundred and twenty-six families and looked after a hundred and thirty-one babies, one set of clients easily replaced by the next. But the hundred and thirty-second baby and his mother Chanel prompts a crisis in Auntie Mei’s life – a tremor that threatens to destroy her resolute detachment.
”'Li inhabits the lives of her characters with such force and compassion that one cannot help but marvel at her remarkable talents.” - Junot Díaz