Lincoln in the Bardo

George Saunders

George Saunders is an American writer whose fiction brings satire, absurdism, and moral inquiry to the pressures of contemporary life. Before joining the creative-writing faculty at Syracuse University, he worked as a technical writer and geophysical engineer. His later fiction repeatedly returns to workplaces, institutions, and systems that turn exploitation into routine. Collections including Pastoralia and Tenth of December place vulnerable people inside corporate, domestic, and military structures, using dark comedy, conversational voices, and abrupt shifts of perspective to test how sympathy survives fear and self-interest. In Persuasion Nation and The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, advertising and political rhetoric become engines of grotesque social behavior. Lincoln in the Bardo extends his experimental methods into the novel, assembling competing voices around grief and attachment. His nonfiction has a related practical focus: Swim in a Pond in the Rain studies Russian stories passage by passage, asking how narrative choices direct attention, expectation, and compassion. His work is distinguished by its combination of formal play, comic severity, and sustained ethical attention.