Lincoln in the Bardo : a novel / George Saunders.
2017
PS3569.A7897 L56 2017 (Mapit)
Available at General Collection
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Details
Title
Lincoln in the Bardo : a novel / George Saunders.
Edition
First edition.
ISBN
9780812995343 (hardcover)
0812995341 (hardcover)
9780553397574
0553397575
0812995341 (hardcover)
9780553397574
0553397575
Published
New York : Random House, [2017]
Language
English
Description
341 pages ; 25 cm
Call Number
PS3569.A7897 L56 2017
Dewey Decimal Classification
813/.54
Summary
"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. "My poor boy, he was too good for this earth," the president says at the time. "God has called him home." 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 a story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its 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. Lincoln in the Bardo 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?" -- Publisher's description
Awards
Man Booker Prize, 2017.
Record Appears in
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