George Saunders Wins the Man Booker Prize 2017 For Lincoln in the Bardo!

Congratulations to the winner of the 2017 Man Booker Prize just announced in London.

The winner is…

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders:  The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War. To read about the novel click here.

We spoke to George Saunders earlier this year at the Sydney Writers’ Festival. To listen to the podcast click here

Lola, Baroness Young, 2017 Chair of judges, said: ‘The form and style of this utterly original novel, reveals a witty, intelligent, and deeply moving narrative. This tale of the haunting and haunted souls in the afterlife of Abraham Lincoln’s young son paradoxically creates a vivid and lively evocation of the characters that populate this other world. Lincoln in the Bardo is both rooted in, and plays with history, and explores the meaning and experience of empathy.’

The winner of what is one of the world’s most prestigious literary award receives £50,000 and the further international recognition that comes with the prize. In the fourth year that the Man Booker has been open to writers of any nationality, the shortlist was made up of two British, one British-Pakistani and three American writers. The shortlisted authors each receive £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book.

The other shortlisted books were:

The History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund: Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in an ex-commune beside a lake in the beautiful, austere backwoods of northern Minnesota. The other girls at school call Linda ‘Freak’, or ‘Commie’. Her parents mostly leave her to her own devices, whilst the other inhabitants have grown up and moved on.So when the perfect family – mother, father and their little boy, Paul – move into the cabin across the lake, Linda insinuates her way into the family’s orbit. She begins to babysit Paul and feels welcomes, that she finally has a place to belong. But something isn’t right. Drawn into secrets she doesn’t understand, Linda must make a choice. But how can a girl with no real knowledge of the world understand what the consequences will be? 

Autumn by Ali Smith:  Ali Smith’s new novel is a meditation on a world growing ever more bordered and exclusive, on what richness and worth are, on what harvest means. It is the first installment of her Seasonal quartet—four stand-alone books, separate yet interconnected and cyclical (as the seasons are)—and it casts an eye over our own time. Who are we? What are we made of? Shakespearean jeu d’esprit, Keatsian melancholy, the sheer bright energy of 1960s pop art: the centuries cast their eyes over our own history making.

4321 by Paul Auster: On March 3, 1947, in the maternity ward of Beth Israel Hospital in Newark, New Jersey, Archibald Isaac Ferguson, the one and only child of Rose and Stanley Ferguson, is born. From that single beginning, Ferguson’s life will take four simultaneous and independent fictional paths. Four Fergusons made of the same genetic material, four boys who are the same boy, will go on to lead four parallel and entirely different lives.

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid: In a city swollen by refugees but still mostly at peace, or at least not yet openly at war, Saeed and Nadia share a cup of coffee, and he makes her smile. A few days later they go for dinner, and over time they share many more meals. They try not to notice the sound of bombs getting closer every night, the radio announcing new laws, the public executions.

Elmet by Fiona Mozley:  This year’s most enigmatic selection. Fresh and distinctive writing from an exciting new voice in fiction, Sally Rooney meets Sarah Perry, Elmet is an unforgettable novel about family, as well as a beautiful meditation on landscape. A great debut.