George Saunders is an American author. He is a creative-writing teacher at Syracuse University and on Substack, and has published short stories, novellas and criticism.
His debut novel, "Lincoln in the Bardo", won the Booker prize in 2017. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the century so far. Set in a cemetery in 1862, it follows a cacophony of souls in limbo hovering around the grave of Willie Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln.
His second novel, "Vigil" (Random House, 192 pages), unfolds in the final hours of a dying big-oil CEO in Dallas. Like "Lincoln in the Bardo", it uses ghosts who can plunge into one another's forms and share feelings and memories—a device through which Saunders explores empathy and human connection.
Mr Saunders aims, he says, to foster compassion and "human connection" through fiction, letting readers clamber inside other minds and see the world through strangers' eyes.
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