Lincoln in the Bardo
A Novel
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4.1 • 788 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • ADAPTED FOR THE METROPOLITAN OPERA AND IN DEVELOPMENT AS A FEATURE FILM
The “devastatingly moving” (People) first novel from the author of Tenth of December: 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
One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century • One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years • One of Paste’s Best Novels of the Decade
“[Lincoln in the Bardo] demonstrates that even the unspeakable—civil war, familial grief—can be named through a close, humanizing narrative voice.”—Amanda Gorman for Time, “25 Books That Capture This American Moment"
February 1862. With the Civil War less than one year old, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-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 that breaks free of its realistic framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm, deploying a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?
Named One of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, USA Today, and Maureen Corrigan, NPR • One of Time’s Ten Best Novels of the Year • One of O: The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of the Year
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
George Saunders’ Man Booker Prize–winning novel has all the hallmarks of his beloved short stories: inventive language, sparkling wit, and dashes of heartache. But Lincoln in the Bardo is really odd and pretty much unlike anything else we’ve read before. Revolving around a true event—the death of Abraham Lincoln’s young son, Willie, who passed away while Lincoln was president—the story takes place in the graveyard where Willie is interred. As dozens of ghosts fight for the salvation of the boy’s soul (and their own), Saunders stuns with his iconoclastic blend of historical fact, lyrical imagination, and searching spirituality.
Customer Reviews
Lincoln in the Bardo
I would give this book 100 stars if I could. It was so touching and beautiful and such an incredibly original way to humanize Lincoln even more than our history already makes him. I didn’t want it to end. Can’t wait to read more by this author and am praying the next novel will be 1/10 as good as this.
Speechless
I just finished this book. It is a masterpiece of prose, originality, and construction. I couldn’t possibly do justice with a review, so here’s a quote:
“His mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state of grief, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.”
BUY THIS BOOK.
Ruther
Trucilen