Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo

Title: Lincoln in the Bardo
Author: George Saunders
Release: 2017-02-14
Kind: ebook
Genre: Literary Fiction, Books, Fiction & Literature, Historical Fiction, Ghost Stories
Size: 5046385
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

The “devastatingly moving” (People) 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 The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years • One of Pastes Best Novels of the Decade

Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR • One of Time’s Ten Best Novels of the Year • A New York Times Notable Book One of O: The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of the Year


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?

“A luminous feat of generosity and humanism.”—Colson Whitehead, The New York Times Book Review


“A masterpiece.”Zadie Smith

More Books from George Saunders

George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders & Joshua Ferris
George Saunders
George Saunders & Chelsea Cardinal
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
John Freeman, Ted Chiang, Percival Everett, George Saunders, Lauren Groff, Stephen King & Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
George Saunders & Lane Smith
PEN American Center, Luis Buñuel, Mahmoud Darwish, Gabriel García Márquez, Yoko Tawada, George Saunders, Paul Auster & Salman Rushdie
PEN American Center, George Saunders, Francine Prose, Salman Rushdie, Amitava Kumar, Paul Lafarge, Jonathan Lethem, Haryette Mullen, Julio Cortazar, Michael Cunningham, Etgar Keret & Maggie Nelson
Luke Reynolds, Jennifer Reynolds, Phillip Lopate, Ann Hood, James McPherson, Frank McCourt, George Saunders, Jane Smiley & Kim Kdwards
George Saunders
George Saunders
Michał Kłobukowski & George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
Michał Kłobukowski & George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
Michał Kłobukowski & George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders
George Saunders