George Saunders
George Saunders is an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays. His novel Lincoln in the Bardo won the 2017 Booker Prize.
Lincoln in the Bardo: A 2017 novel by George Saunders about Abraham Lincoln grieving his son Willie in a cemetery populated by the dead. This Booker Prize-winning novel brought Saunders’s experimental historical fiction to a broad international audience.
Unreliable narrator: A narrator whose account is compromised by limited knowledge, bias, deception, or confusion. Saunders often lets characters’ self-justifying voices reveal more than they understand.
David Foster Wallace: An American novelist and essayist known for postmodern fiction and sustained attention to contemporary culture. Wallace and Saunders are often discussed together for combining formal play with moral concern.
Amherst College: A private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts, founded in 1821. Saunders earned his undergraduate degree there before beginning a career in engineering and writing.
Booker Prize: An annual literary award for a novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland. Lincoln in the Bardo won the prize in 2017, expanding Saunders’s international profile.
Tenth of December: A 2013 short-story collection by George Saunders, including the story “Tenth of December.” The collection is a widely read entry point to his short fiction and its satirical, compassionate voice.
Free indirect discourse: A narrative technique that blends third-person narration with a character’s idiom and thoughts. The technique helps his stories move between social observation and a character’s private logic.
Kurt Vonnegut: An American novelist whose comic, speculative fiction addressed war, technology, and human behavior. Vonnegut’s blend of absurdity and humane criticism offers a useful literary precedent for Saunders.
Colorado School of Mines: A public research university in Golden, Colorado, specializing in engineering and applied science. Saunders studied geophysical engineering there, a background distinct from his later literary career.
MacArthur Fellowship: A grant awarded by the MacArthur Foundation to people showing exceptional creativity in their work. Saunders received the fellowship in 2006 for his writing.