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Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo

A Novel

by George Saunders
Paperback
Publication Date: 06/02/2018

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** WINNER OF THE 2017 MAN BOOKER PRIZE**

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December: a moving and original father-son story featuring none other than Abraham Lincoln, as well as an unforgettable cast of supporting characters, living and dead, historical and invented

One of Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Books of 2017 So Far * Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy's body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state--called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo--a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo
 is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?

Praise for Lincoln in the Bardo

"A luminous feat of generosity and humanism."--Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review

"A masterpiece."--Zadie Smith

"Ingenious . . . Saunders--well on his way toward becoming a twenty-first-century Twain--crafts an American patchwork of love and loss, giving shape to our foundational sorrows."--Vogue

"Saunders is the most humane American writer working today."--Harper's Magazine

ISBN:
9780812985405
9780812985405
Category:
Historical Fiction
Format:
Paperback
Publication Date:
06-02-2018
Language:
English
Publisher:
Random House Publishing Group
Country of origin:
United States
Dimensions (mm):
209.55x138.94x20.07mm
Weight:
0.33kg
George Saunders

George Saunders is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller Tenth of December, which won the Folio Prize 2014 and was shortlisted for the National Book Award 2013, an essay collection, The Braindead Megaphone, and the critically acclaimed story collections Civil WarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation.

In 2013, he gave a graduation lecture at Syracuse University, which was then published as a New York Times bestselling book, Congratulations, by the way. In 2006, he was awarded a MacArthur fellowship. He teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University.

In 2017 he was awarded The Man Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo.

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