Lincoln in the Bardo: Award-winning Novel with Dramatic Flair

George Saunders’s novel Lincoln in the Bardo, published in 2017, is a unique blend of history and imagination. Most of us know the facts of Lincoln’s brief presidency: publicly he led the nation during the Civil War; privately he and his wife Mary suffered the loss of their son, Willie, in 1862. Saunders’s novel addresses each of these facets and imagines yet another dimension. After his son’s funeral, Lincoln was seen entering the crypt where Willie had been interred, a grieving father struggling with his loss. Saunders imagines how Lincon’s lonely visit was viewed by the restless souls “in the bardo.”

The “bardo” is a Tibetan Buddhist concept for a transitional or intermediate state between life and death. The characters who inhabit the bardo in Saunders’s novel seem to believe they are “sick,” not dead. For various reasons, they cannot let go of their mortal lives even though they are unable to live again. The stories they share weave a fascinating backdrop to the factual events of the period. The ordinary and extraordinary folks in the bardo are surprised by Lincoln’s presence among them. More than one character, like the reader, is deeply moved by the father’s bond with his eleven-year-old son.

Saunders is best known as a writer of short stories and is considered by many to be the world’s greatest living writer of short stories. In a 2023 interview, Saunders admits that he originally envisioned Lincoln in the Bardo to be a 30-page short story. Fortunately for Saunders fans, this novel was developed to 343 pages.

Since 1997, Saunders has been teaching creative writing at Syracuse University. Saunders, who has been writing professionally since 1986, has won numerous awards for his short stories: National Magazine Award for Fiction 1994, 2000, 2004; Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction 2023. For Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders received the Man Booker Prize in 2017 and the Audie Award for audiobook in 2018. This dramatic audiobook features a full cast with Sauders as narrator and 163 voiced characters.

Some critics note that the novel is challenging to read, as it blends excerpts from actual letters and newspapers with surreal description, but Saunders’s dramatic storytelling is compelling. Many readers prefer the audio edition over the print version of this book because the story is so powerful. A further dramatic iteration of Lincoln in the Bardo debuts during this season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York: Lincoln in the Bardo, commissioned by the Met, is an original American epic with music by Missy Mazzoli and libretto by Royce Vavrek.

All of George Saunders’s books may be acquired through the Knox County Public Library. Any title not currently available may be obtained through inter-library loan. You may visit the Library at 502 N. 7th St. in Vincennes. The Library’s telephone number is 812-886-4380 and its website is kcpl.lib.in.us.