Lincoln in the Bardo

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War in February 1862, George Saunders's "Lincoln in the Bardo" plunges into the profound grief of President Abraham Lincoln following the death of his beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie. The novel takes a historical anecdote—Lincoln's reported visits to his son's crypt—and expands it into a surreal and deeply moving exploration of life, death, and the afterlife. Willie finds himself in a transitional state, a bardo, where a cacophony of ghosts, trapped between worlds, narrate their own stories and commiserate on their earthly regrets. As Lincoln grapples with his sorrow, entering the crypt to mourn, the spectral residents become embroiled in a monumental struggle for Willie's soul, seeking to prevent him from fully departing the earthly realm. Through a groundbreaking polyphonic narrative, Saunders masterfully blends historical fact with supernatural imagination, examining themes of familial love, loss, and the nature of human existence, all while asking how we navigate a world where everything we cherish eventually ends.