George Saunders's brilliant debut novel about a grieving Lincoln confirms him as a literary star ... To read Saunders's fiction is to be dazzled by ingenuity, imagination and searing comic verve ... A tender but trenchant reminder that America is and always has been many-voiced: not one story, but millions * Sunday Times * A luminous feat of generosity and humanism... Such is Saunders's magnificent portraiture that readers will recognize in this wretchedness and bravery aspects of their own characters as well -- Colson Whitehead * New York Times * The most strange and brilliant book you'll read this year ... Riotously imagined ... So intimate and human, so profound, that it seems like an act of grace * Financial Times * Dazzling and disorientating ... As you turn the pages of this remarkable novel it starts to feel uncannily like a hinge in American history * The Times * It would be an understatement to call this novel an extraordinary tour de force ... Steeped in morality, it's a master-feat of vitality * Sunday Times * A breathtakingly agile narrative ... A brilliant, exhausting, emotionally involving attempt to get up again, to fight for empathy, kindness and self-sacrifice, and to resist -- Alex Clark * Observer * A surreal metaphysical drama about grief and freedom ... A father-son narrative that is both hilarious and haunting -- Johanna Thomas-Corr * Evening Standard * Saunders's extraordinary verbal energy is harnessed, for the most part, in the service of capturing the pathos of everyday life ... It is Saunders's beautifully realized portrait of Lincoln - caught at this hinge moment in time, in his own personal bardo, as it were - that powers this book -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times * A masterpiece -- Zadie Smith * New York Times * An incredible work of art. Deeply moral, heartfelt, hilarious, and wildly imaginative * Buzzfeed * A strange and haunting novel - his highly anticipated first, after decades of short-story wizardry - about the effect the dead have on the living, and the living on the dead * Economist * The story canters along ... The writing constantly surprises * Mail on Sunday * Lincoln in the Bardo has great matters on its mind: freedom and slavery, the spirit and the body. But it is, finally, "about" Abraham Lincoln, that great spectral presence in a whole subgenre of American fiction * New Yorker * Must be one of my favourite novels. What a warm, kindhearted and radical piece of writing. Such delicacy, such serious wit. I love it -- Max Porter This is a book that confounds our expectations of what a novel should look and sound like * Washington Post * The much anticipated long-form debut from the US short-story maestro does not dissapoint * Guardian * An original father-son tale that expertly blends history and fiction (and even the supernatural), Lincoln in the Bardo explores grief, loss, life, death * Buzzfeed Year Ahead in Books * A historical novel like no other - a supernatural ensemble extravaganza of awesome intricacy and somewhat perplexing purpose ... A feat of style ... A polyphonic spree that spins the head -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Telegraph * George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time * Khaled Hosseini * A cacophonous, genre-busting book inspired by the death of Abraham Lincoln's young son * Metro * A morally passionate, serious writer ... He will be read long after these times have passed * Zadie Smith * He makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We're lucky to have him * Jonathan Franzen * An astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny * Thomas Pynchon * Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice ... Scary, hilarious and unforgettable * Tobias Wolff * There is no one better, no one more essential * Dave Eggers * Few people cut as hard or deep as Saunders does * Junot Diaz * Saunders is a true original - restlessly inventive, yet deeply humane * Jennifer Egan * Reading George Saunders is, it's safe to say, like no other literary experience * Observer * No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised -- Michiko Kakutani * New York Times * Funny, poignant - in flashes, deeply moving - light as a feather and consistently weird -- Hari Kunzru There is really no one like him. He is an original - but everyone knows that -- Lorrie Moore Swings from hilarious to crushing and back again with astonishing dexterity ... An exceptional novel ... Believe the hype * Chicago Review of Books * Strange, profound, melancholy ... In the final of Lincoln of the Bardo, the realities of death and loss are faced head-on ... Historical fiction will never be the same * Newsday * The author may have set out to write his first novel, but the work he completed is a genre unto itself * The Atlantic * An unsentimental novel of Shakespearean proportions, gorgeously stuffed with tragic characters, bawdy humor, terrifying visions, throat-catching tenderness, and a galloping narrative * Elle * One of the strangest books of mainstream fiction around, competing only with some of Saunders's own story collection for unbridled inventiveness * GQ * A matterlightblooming phenomenon. Loud and big. Exploding with grief and, more so, hope. And better left undescribed until you yourself reach the end * Time * It's only February but this will undoubtedly be considered one of the best books of 2017 * Huffington Post * Wonderfully bizarre and hilariously terrifying examination of the ability to live and love * Poets & Writers * Moving and inventive tour de force * Sunday Times * Fiction taken to a new realm, and a work of sheer brilliance * GQ * This astounding novel pitches you into the strangest of places ... Brilliant * Psychologies * Devastatingly moving * People * Along with the wonderfully bizarre, empathy abounds in Lincoln * Time * A strange, wise novel, truer in its expression than many ostensibly historical novels * New Humanist * Tremendously moving ... Surpasses all expectations. This is a masterpiece * Sunday Express * An urgently political, profoundly moral book, albeit one so playful and so fantastical that the reader may hardly notice * Economist * A joyous, comically macabre exploration of love, death and loss ... Bursting with life -- Book of the Week * Bristol Post * Saunders is defined by a crackling, electric kind of empathy; by the kind of humbling understanding that simply comes from trying to look further, understand more, know deeper -- Joseph Earp * The Brag * A hands-down masterpiece - the subject of Abraham Lincoln and the genius of this author is a perfect union ... I wept while reading this book. It is singular - I've never read anything quite like it -- Jeffrey Tambor * International New York Times * I literally couldn't put it down ... Hilarious to poignant to really moving * Irish Country * Surprising, daring, emotionally wrenching and warm-hearted * Sunday Times, Summer Reading, `Our Top Five' * Fact and fiction mingle in this affecting portrait of a grieving president * Financial Times, Summer Reading * Best known for his critically acclaimed short stories, this is Saunders' first full-length novel, told with tenderness, imagination and wit * Zoe Apostolides, Daily Telegraph, Summer Reading * It's like a gothic, American Under Milk Wood * The Times, Summer Reading * I met the amazing George Saunders at a recent festival and can't wait to read Lincoln in the Bardo * Anne Enright, Irish Times * George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo is an extraordinary act of poignant literary virtuosity about love, death, ghosts and history, starring the grieving president * Simon Sebag Montefiore, Evening Standard, Summer Reading * I was won over by the sheer brio, writerly flourish and humanity of Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, which imagines a disputatious convocation of the dead observing the US president as he mourns his son * Nick Curtis, Evening Standard, Summer Reading * From his short stories, we might have expected Saunders's long-awaited first novel to be some sprawling vision of a future America. In fact, it's a historical novel - albeit one like no other ... It's an admirable feat of style * Daily Telegraph, Summer Reading * I'll be working my way on backwards through George Saunders, having been hooked conclusively by Lincoln in the Bardo, tonal whimsies and all. I'm presently on Tenth of December, but I expect to have reached The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil by the time we go on holiday * Francis Spufford, Guardian, Summer Reading * Huge excitement greeted this debut novel from the US short-story master. Abraham Lincoln mourns his dead son, while other spirits in the cemetery, hovering between life and death * Guardian (Review) * It revolves around the ghost of Abraham Lincoln's son, who died aged 11, and his fellows in the graveyard. There's no single narrator, but hundreds of different voices instead * Daily Telegraph * Unfolding in the graveyard over a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a thrilling exploration of death, grief and the deeper meaning and possibilities of life * Irish Times *
