The novel's title was announced in a conversation between Saunders and Susan Sarandon in Interview magazine, in April 2016. Saunders first announced the novel in a 2015 New York Times interview with the novelist Jennifer Egan, revealing that it would have a 'supernatural element' while remaining 'ostensibly historical'. The greatest part of their penance is that they feel utterly inessential – incapable of influencing the living. They were sort of cynical they were stuck in this realm, called the bardo (from the Tibetan notion of a sort of transitional purgatory between rebirths), stuck because they'd been unhappy or unsatisfied in life. Without giving anything away, let me say this: I made a bunch of ghosts. My novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is the result of that attempt. I carried that image around for the next 20-odd years, too scared to try something that seemed so profound, and then finally, in 2012, noticing that I wasn't getting any younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read 'Afraid to Embark on Scary Artistic Project He Desperately Longed to Attempt', decided to take a run at it, in exploratory fashion, no commitments. An image spontaneously leapt into my mind – a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pietà. Many years ago, during a visit to Washington DC, my wife's cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that, in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was president, his beloved son, Willie, died, and was temporarily interred in that crypt, and that the grief-stricken Lincoln had, according to the newspapers of the day, entered the crypt 'on several occasions' to hold the boy's body. In March 2017, Saunders provided more detail on the background and conception of his novel:

The novel was inspired by a story Saunders's wife's cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie's crypt at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown on several occasions to hold the body, a story that seems to be verified by contemporary newspaper accounts. Many publications later ranked it one of the best novels of its decade.Ĭonception and research Background Lincoln in the Bardo received critical acclaim, and won the 2017 Booker Prize.

The bulk of the novel, which takes place over the course of a single evening, is set in the bardo-an intermediate space between life and rebirth. The novel takes place during and after the death of Abraham Lincoln's son William 'Willie' Wallace Lincoln and deals with the president's grief at his loss. It is Saunders's first full-length novel and was the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller for the week of March 5, 2017. Lincoln in the Bardo is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders.

Goodreads lincoln in the bardo