Yiyun Li

Though she’s brought much from her scientific grounding to her work as an author – ‘curiosity and humility’, for two things – it’s a different discipline that strikes a rhyming note for her. ‘Great writing feels like great music: you can’t stop to analyse it; only follow the rhythm and feel something inside you moving along.’ For her Object Lesson, Yiyun traces the ways she’s moved by the oldest extant pianoforte