George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

Merritt Moseley (University of North Carolina, Asheville)

Ed. by Cristina Sandru, The Literary Encyclopedia, Sofia Ahlberg, Uppsala University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 2017

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

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Novel

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George Saunders’s 2017

Lincoln in the Bardo

was the first full-length novel by this celebrated author. It made the

New York Times

bestseller list; to date it has been translated into (at least) Polish, Greek, Persian, Portuguese, Swedish and Croatian. The film rights have been sold, though there is no timeline for a film as yet; the announcement of the sale of rights said that Saunders would collaborate on the adaptation, which the novel’s structure will render challenging. Observers and bettors had made

Lincoln in the Bardo

the favorite to win the Booker Prize for fiction, and it did -- as the second American winner after the eligibility rules were changed in 2014. It received praise—as would be expected—from the chair of the judges, Baroness Young, who said that the “form and…

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Citation: Moseley, Merritt. "Lincoln in the Bardo". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 31 January 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41860, accessed 21 February 2025.]

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo

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