Liberation Day

The world’s best short story writer … Liberation Day is great art * DAILY TELEGRAPH *My writerly friends will be getting George Saunders’s Liberation Day, so we can laugh, and wince, and weep, and then pore over his sentences to see how he does it – RUTH OZEKI * GUARDIAN, Books of the year *Moving and tragic and also funny and deeply human * NEW STATESMAN, Books of the Year 2022 *Here, the unnerving dystopia of the title story alone makes this collection, rich in wicked humour, acute observation and awkward emotion, a must-read * SUNDAY TIMES, Book of the Year – Chosen by Patricia Nicol *A master of the short form … shrewd, truthful * IRISH TIMES, Best Books of 2022 *Short-story virtuoso George Saunders returned to the form with Liberation Day, tragicomic allegories of try-hard regular folk caught up in hells beyond their understanding * GUARDIAN, Books of the Year *The zen master of the short-story form … Here, the unnerving, bravura dystopia of the title story alone makes this collection, rich in wicked humour, acute observation and awkward emotion, a must-read . Better to eke these out than binge’ * THE TIMES, Books of the Year *This is the joy of Saunders: he encapsulates human experience, while always hitting the punchline * FINANCIAL TIMES *Saunders is funny and kind as ever, and his narrative virtuosity puts him up there with the best – ANNE ENRIGHT * GUARDIAN *The Alan Bennett of small-town America … These stories are not only perfectly pitched; they come with enough comedy to have you grinning and enough empathy to suddenly stop you in your tracks * OBSERVER *A joy. Effortlessly stylish, funny and smart, they come spangled with sadness and a melancholic malaise as Saunders casts an eye over a country teetering towards wreckage * DAILY MAIL *A triumph of storytelling * I PAPER *The Tom Hanks of American letters … A master of the short story … His art speaks to the dreadful present; his open-handed style, his skill as an educator, offer hope by encouraging each individual voice to find courage to speak * NEW STATESMAN *A writer known as much for his formal inventiveness as the sharpness of his satirical wit * INDEPENDENT.CO.UK *A compelling satire of modern America * PROSPECT *In describing the stories, even quoting them, we lose something valuable. That in itself is a measure of great writing. The only way to experience Saunders’s oblique, farcical, tragic world is to dive right in. It will take the top of your head off, but it’s worth it * THE TIMES *George Saunders is that rare contemporary author who is as original as he is beloved … Readers can be assured that all the hallmarks of Saunders’ writing that electrified them from the beginning are present in his new collection, Liberation Day: bold original humor, the blurred view of American life, and the sweet humanity that pierces through it all * TIME *Virtuosic … The nine stories in Liberation Day are by turn exhilarating, sad, mind-bendingly bizarre and wickedly funny … Perfect * SUNDAY TIMES *Leaves you in awe of his craft * FOYLES *The titan of the modern story returns with a collection of wickedly funny, perceptive and subversive miniatures * WATERSTONES *An exquisite work from a writer whose reach is galactic * OPRAH QUARTERLY *Masterful * I PAPER *Triumphant * BUZZ MAGAZINE *So good it makes you wonder why anyone else bothers * VOGUE *Saunders’ words smell like Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen King, Raymond Carver and David Lynch sharing a spliff in Joni Mitchell’s parking lot * THE WORD FACTORY *A morally passionate, serious writer … He will be read long after these times have passed – ZADIE SMITHSaunders has revealed himself to be nothing less than an American Gogol: funny, pointed, full of nuance, and always writing with a moral heart. This, his first book of short fiction in nearly a decade, only cements the validity of such a point of view. The nine pieces here are smart and funny, speculative yet at the same time written on a human scale, narratives full of love and loss and longing and the necessity of trying to connect … A tour de force collection that showcases all of Saunders’ many skills * KIRKUS *George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time – KHALED HOSSEINIWhat warm, kindhearted and radical writing. Such delicacy, such serious wit. I love it – MAX PORTERHe makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We’re lucky to have him – JONATHAN FRANZENA luminous feat of generosity and humanism – COLSON WHITEHEADSaunders is a true original - restlessly inventive, yet deeply humane – JENNIFER EGANFunny, poignant – in flashes, deeply moving – light as a feather and consistently weird – HARI KUNZRU

George Saunders is the author of ten books, most recently the essay collection A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. His debut novel Lincoln in the Bardo won the 2017 Man Booker Prize and the Premio Rezzori prize. His collection Tenth of December was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the inaugural Folio Prize. He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for excellence in the short story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2013, he was named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.