Liberation Day
From 'the world's best short story writer' (The Telegraph) and winner of the Man Booker Prize
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
'Saunders is funny and kind as ever, and his narrative virtuosity puts him up there with the best' Anne Enright, Guardian
'A triumph of storytelling' i paper
'A joy. 'Effortlessly stylish, funny and smart' Daily Mail
From the pre-eminent writer of political dystopia and master of the modern short story, Liberation Day takes on ideas of power, ethics and justice, cutting to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans.
In a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park, a man is confronted with everything he has taken for granted about his reality. In coded emails, a grandfather advises his grandson on how to survive an autocratic regime. A political protestor for hire struggles to remember who he used to be.
These nine wickedly funny stories encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.
'The only way to experience Saunders's oblique, farcical, tragic world is to dive right in. It will take the top of your head off, but it's worth it' The Times
'The world's best short story writer … Liberation Day is great art' Daily Telegraph
Customer Reviews
Didn’t get it. Again.
Author
American mining engineer, doorman, roofer, convenience store clerk, guitarist in a country-and-western band, knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse turned fiction writer and teacher of creative writing at Syracuse University since 1997. He mostly writes short stories that appear in the New Yorker and similar august literary journals. This is his first published collection since 2014. His only novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017) won the Booker prize, and he’s been nominated for countless other awards. Time magazine (what would they know) hailed him the “best short story writer in English.” I am an old white guy, like Saunders, but don’t understand what he’s on about most of the time. One notable exception is A Swim In The Pond (2021), a condensation of his lectures and tutorials to creative writing students about the great Russian short story writers Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy and Gogol. It is superb.
Summary
Nine stories, the first and longest of which occupies a third of the book. It and several others are dystopian. The ones that aren’t dystopian might as well be as far as I was concerned. They did not come from a reality with which I was familiar. According to reviewers more knowledgeable and appreciative of Saunders than me on Goodreads, the stories “examine human nature, often from offbeat and imaginative angles.” Agree, particularly with the second part. Themes include “poverty, inequality, power, class, exploitation, revenge, love and disappointment” and “astute” observations are made about “the state of our world.” I didn’t get any of that, despite reading six of the stories a second time, willing myself to be cleverer. No such luck.
Writing
Fans of experimental fiction will undoubtedly rejoice. Mr S’s “telegramatic” style that omits articles and capitalises the first letters of words in the middle of sentences in arbitrary (to me) fashion is not my idea of an enjoyable reading experience.