#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
******Named One of Paste's 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
