Award-Winning Books of 2017
The biggest prizes in the book world come out
in fall. Here's the best of the best for your to-read list.
By Mark Athitakis
6 of 6
Lincoln in the Bardo
By George Saunders
368 pages;
Random House
George Saunders, the recipient of this year's
Man Booker Prize, has long been known
for his quirky, often comic short stories.
Lincoln in the Bardo, his first novel,
has its share of idiosyncrasies, but thematically it's made of darker, more
soulful stuff. It's narrated by a host of characters who've been banished to
the "bardo," a Buddhist term for a kind of purgatory, and a key
figure is President Abraham Lincoln, who keeps returning to a cemetery to visit
the grave of his recently deceased son. The novel is a pleasure for the variety
of personal stories, but it's the "broken, awed, humbled, diminished"
Lincoln himself—who can't reconcile his private grief with his
despair over the ongoing Civil War—that makes this book "
a
devastating fable for our own time."
— Mark Athitakis
Published 11/17/2017