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
'One of the best science fiction short stories to be published in the 21st century so far' SFX Review
'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
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The first short story collection in ten years from the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
MacArthur genius and Booker Prize-winner George Saunders returns with a collection of short stories that make sense of our increasingly troubled world, his first since the New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist Tenth of December
The 'best short story writer in English' (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose - wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned - Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.
'Love Letter' is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson, in the midst of a dystopian political situation in the not-too-distant future, that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and each other. 'Ghoul' is set in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado, and follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complex character named Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted about his 'reality.' In 'Mother's Day', two women who loved the same man come to an existential reckoning in the middle of a hailstorm. And in 'Elliott Spencer', our eighty-nine-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed - his memory 'scraped' - a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters.
Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories coalesce into a case for viewing the world with the same generosity and clear-eyed attention as Saunders does, even in the most absurd of circumstances.
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'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.