Lincoln and afterlife novel wins Booker prize

BRITAIN: American author George Saunders won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction yesterday for Lincoln in the

Bardo, a polyphonic symphony of a novel about restless souls adrift in the afterlife.

It is the second year in a row an American has won the £50,000 pound (NZ$92,000) prize, which was opened to US authors in 2014.

The book is based on a real visit President Abraham Lincoln made in 1862 to the body of his 11-yearold son Willie at a Washington cemetery. It is narrated by a chorus of characters who are all dead, but unwilling or unable to let go of life.

By turns witty, bawdy, poetic and unsettling, Lincoln in the

Bardo juxtaposes the real events of the US Civil War – through passages from historians both real and fictional – with a chorus of otherworldly characters male and female, young and old. In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the transition state between death and rebirth.

Saunders was awarded the prize by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.

Accepting his trophy, Saunders said the book’s style may be complex, but the question he posed at its heart was simple: Do we respond to uncertain times with fear and division, ‘‘or do we take that ancient great leap of faith and try to respond with love?’'

The author said he resisted telling the story of Lincoln, an American icon, for 20 years. But the novel, which took four years to write, turned out to be pointedly timely at a divided time for the US.

‘‘He underwent I think a kind of spiritual growth spurt that we don’t see very often,’' outgrowing the ‘‘lazy, racist attitudes’' he was raised with.

‘‘His compassion and his heart kept growing out even as his own life was becoming more and more difficult,’’ Saunders said.

‘‘Contrast that with the current administration that seems intent on shrinking the commonwealth of compassion until we can only care about people who are exactly like us. It’s a complete eradication of the American ideal.’'

Lincoln in the Bardo is the first novel by the 58-year-old Saunders, an acclaimed short story writer who won the Folio Prize in 2014 for his darkly funny story collection

Tenth of December .–