Lincoln in the Bardo
Lincoln in the Bardo
Author: George Saunders
Desc: In his long-awaited first novel American master George Saunders delivers his most original transcendent and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it. 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 returned to the crypt several times alone 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 thrilling 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—living and dead historical and invented—to ask a timeless profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?