Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel

<b>The long-awaited first novel from the author of <i>Tenth of December</i>: 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</b><br><br>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. &quot;My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,&quot; the president says at the time. &quot;God has called him home.&quot; Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns, alone, to the crypt several times to hold his boy's body.<br><br>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.<br><i><br>Lincoln in the Bardo</i> 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?<br><br><b>Praise for George Saunders</b><br> <br> &quot;No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised.&quot;<b> - Michiko Kakutani, <i>The New York Times</i></b><br> <br> &quot;Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time.&quot;<b> - Khaled Hosseini</b><br><br>&quot;Few people cut as hard or deep as Saunders does.&quot;<b> - Junot Díaz</b><br> <br> &quot;George Saunders is a complete original. There is no one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.&quot;<b> - Dave Eggers</b><br> <br>&quot;Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.&quot;<b> - Zadie Smith</b><br> <br>&quot;There is no one like him. He is an original - but everyone knows that.&quot;<b> - Lorrie Moore</b><br><br> &quot;George Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We're lucky to have him.&quot;<b> - Jonathan Franzen</b><br> <br> &quot;An astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic, and funny - telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times.&quot;<b> - Thomas Pynchon</b>