Lincoln in the Bardo

This is the first novel by the award-winning, bestselling author George Saunders - a true literary eventTenth of December was a New York Times bestseller, and included in their 10 Best Books of the Year list. It sold over 400,000 copies worldwide, with 12,000 coming from UK markets.George Saunders is one of the most lauded and respected US writers, and has been included in Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World, the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year list.To be accompanied by an extensive marketing and publicity campaign.George Saunders is the author of twelve books. His debut novel Lincoln in the Bardo won the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the Premio Rezzori prize. His collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize. He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and the 2023 Library of Congress Prize. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. georgesaundersbooks.comWINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 A STORY OF LOVE AFTER DEATH 'A masterpiece' Zadie Smith 'Extraordinary' Daily Mail 'Breathtaking' Observer 'A tour de force' Sunday Times The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body. From this seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a thrilling, supernatural domain both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself trapped in a transitional realm - called, in Tibetan tradition, the bardo - and as ghosts mingle, squabble, gripe and commiserate, and stony tendrils creep towards the boy, a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul. Unfolding over a single night, Lincoln in the Bardo is written with George Saunders' inimitable humour, pathos and grace. Here he invents an exhilarating new form, and is confirmed as one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Deploying a theatrical, kaleidoscopic panoply of voices - living and dead, historical and fictional - Lincoln in the Bardo poses a timeless question: how do we live and love when we know that everything we hold dear must end?WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017A masterpieceMust be one of my favourite novels. What a warm, kindhearted and radical piece of writing. Such delicacy, such serious wit. I love itAn early contender for 2017's Man Booker, a highly affecting novel about Abraham Lincoln's grief at the loss of his young sonThe much anticipated long-form debut from the US short-story maestro does not dissapointThe debut novel by the short-story supremo George Saunders. Set in 1862 in a cemetery in Washington, it has drawn high praiseA cacophonous, genre-busting book inspired by the death of Abraham Lincoln's young sonFilled with wit and sadness . It is an immensely powerful work. In the hands of the right imagination, the horror of individual loss can become an extraordinarily humane exploration of the beauty and the value of life, however painfulAn original father-son tale that expertly blends history and fiction (and even the supernatural), Lincoln in the Bardo explores grief, loss, life, deathGeorge Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first timeA morally passionate, serious writer ... He will be read long after these times have passedHe makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We're lucky to have himAn astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funnySaunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice ... Scary, hilarious and unforgettableThere is no one better, no one more essentialFew people cut as hard or deep as Saunders doesSaunders is a true original - restlessly inventive, yet deeply humaneReading George Saunders is, it's safe to say, like no other literary experienceNo one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchisedSurreal and puncturingFunny, poignant - in flashes, deeply moving - light as a feather and consistently weirdThere is really no one like him. He is an original - but everyone knows thatPart of the reason it's so hard to talk about him is the shared acknowledgment among writers that Saunders is somehow a little more than just a writer. . . . [He] writes like something of a saint. He seems in touch with some better beingStunning ... Lincoln in the Bardo is a triumph ... In Lincoln in the Bardo Saunders has reinvented the formA strange but brilliant study of grief and bereavement