SUBVERSIVE, PROFOUND, ESSENTIAL STORIES

The first short-story collection in 10 years from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, Liberation Day tries to make sense of our increasingly troubled world. Here, George Saunders explores ideas of power, ethics and justice, and cuts to the heart of what it means to live in community with fellow humans.

His prose is wickedly funny, unsentimental. Set in the not-too-distant future, Love Letter, for instance, is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson in the midst of a dystopian political situation. Ghoul is set in the hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado. Together, the book’s nine subversive, profound and essential stories coalesce into a case for viewing the world, even at its most absurd, with the same generosity and clear-eyed attention Saunders does.

George Saunders

256pp, ~799, Bloomsbury