Lincoln in the Bardo

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZEThe long-awaited first novel from the author of Tenth of December amoving 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 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 along, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In amatter of days, despite predictions of arecovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in aGeorgetown 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 agrief-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 asupernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in astrange 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 abold 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 atestament to fiction's ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented athrilling new form that deploys akaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices to ask atimeless, 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 atwenty-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