The release date for the English version of 'Lincoln in the Bardo' by
George Saunders is Feb 2017. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
American master George Saunders produces his most inventive, sublime, and poignant writing to date in his much anticipated first book. Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other, taking place in a cemetery over the course of one night and recounted by a stunning chorus of voices. This is because only Saunders could have imagined it.
1862 February. It is less than a year into the Civil War. The country is starting to realise it is going to be involved in a protracted, violent conflict as the combat has intensified. Concurrently, Willie, the adored eleven-year-old son of President Lincoln, lays critically sick upstairs in the White House. Willie passes away in a number of days, defying expectations that he may recover, and is buried in a Georgetown cemetery. The president remarks, "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," at the moment. "God has called him home." Newspapers claim that a distraught Lincoln went back to the tomb many times by himself to hold his son's remains.
George Saunders takes that kernel of historical fact and uses it to weave an enduring tale of love and grief within a family that transcends time and reality to enter a funny and horrifying supernatural world. In a peculiar purgatory where spirits mix, complain, lament, argue, and do unusual acts of penance, Willie Lincoln discovers himself. In this period of transition—referred to as the bardo in Tibetan tradition—a titanic war for young Willie's soul breaks out.
Lincoln in the Bardo is a daring stride forward and an incredible creative achievement from one of the most significant and influential authors of his age. Formally audacious, giving in nature, and profoundly addressing emotional issues, it is evidence of fiction's capacity to effectively and truthfully address the issues that are really important 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?