American well-known author George Saunders won the esteemed Man Booker Prize in fiction genre on Tuesday for Lincoln in the Bardo, a polyphonic symphony of a novel about restive souls adrift in the afterlife.
It is the second year in a row an American has won the £50,000 ($66,000) prize, which was opened to U.S. authors in 2014.
“I feel kind of numb,” said Saunders, who said incredulity and gratefulness were his principal emotions on winning.
The book is based on an actual trip that President Abraham Lincoln made in 1862 to the body of his 11-year-old son Willie at a Washington cemetery. By turns witty, bawdy, poetic and unsettling, Lincoln in the Bardo juxtaposes events from Lincoln’s life and the U.S. Civil War through passages from historians both real and fictional with a chorus of ghostly characters who are dead, but reluctant or unable to let go of life.
In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the transition affirms between death and rebirth.
Novel “stood out because of its innovation, it’s very different styling, the way in which it paradoxically brought to life these almost-dead souls.”
Saunders was given the award by Prince Charles’ wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a ceremony at London’s medieval Guildhall.
On Award Ceremony Saunders said the book’s style may be multifaceted, but the question posed at its heart is simple - Do we take action to uncertain times with fear and division, “or do we take that ancient great leap of faith and try to respond with love?”
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