US novelist George Saunders wins UK’s Man Booker Prize for ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’
Saunders’ tale of Abraham Lincoln and his dead son has made him the second consecutive US winner of the Man Booker, which was once open only to Commonwealth authors
American author George Saunders has won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo – a fictional account of Abraham Lincoln burying his young son.
In his acceptance speech, Saunders, 58, noted that “we live in a strange time,” adding he saw the key question of the era being whether society responded to events with “exclusion and negative projection and violence,” or “with love.”
Saunders was the second consecutive American writer to win the prize, after the rules were changed in 2014 to allow authors of any book written in English and published in the UK to compete.
His novel, set in 1862, a year into the American Civil war, is a blend of historical accounts and imaginative fiction, which sees Lincoln’s son Willie, who died in the White House at age 11, in “Bardo” – a Tibetan form of purgatory.
Saunders was presented with his award by Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, the wife of Britain’s Prince Charles.