Recommendations
Books Like Lincoln in the Bardo
Best books to read after Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo is the Man Booker Prize winner — ghost voices, Abraham Lincoln's grief, the bardo between death and rebirth. These recommendations continue the Saunders canon, explore the formally inventive American novel tradition, or offer companion reading in the tradition of the historical novel told through multiple voices.
- 1Buy
Tenth of December
by George Saunders
The essential Saunders collection — the short fiction that shows the full range of his voice, and the natural companion for readers who want more Saunders after Lincoln in the Bardo.
- 2Buy
Pastoralia
by George Saunders
The earlier story collection — 'Sea Oak' and 'Winky' and the theme park satires, essential Saunders for readers who want more after Lincoln in the Bardo.
- 3Buy
Wolf Hall
by Hilary Mantel
The most celebrated recent British historical novel — Thomas Cromwell in the court of Henry VIII, Mantel's formal ambition and her commitment to making historical figures come alive sharing the same project as Saunders's Lincoln.
- 4Buy
The Pillars of the Earth
by Ken Follett
The historical fiction companion for readers who want more of Lincoln's era — the building of a cathedral in twelfth-century England, Follett's epic historical novel for readers who engaged with Lincoln in the Bardo as historical fiction rather than formal experiment.
- 5Buy
A Gentleman in Moscow
by Amor Towles
The elegantly structured historical novel — Count Rostov under house arrest in the Metropol Hotel for thirty-two years, Towles sharing Saunders's ability to make an unusual formal constraint (the bardo, the hotel) into a meditation on what it means to live well.
- 6Buy
The Hours
by Michael Cunningham
The Pulitzer Prize-winning multi-voice novel — three women across different decades linked by Virginia Woolf, Cunningham's formally ambitious structure sharing Lincoln in the Bardo's commitment to polyphony as a form.
- 7Buy
Lincoln
by Gore Vidal
The companion historical Lincoln novel — Vidal's 1984 novelization of Lincoln's presidency, the traditional historical novel about the same Lincoln who appears in the Bardo, showing a very different formal approach to the same subject.
- 8Buy
The Lovely Bones
by Alice Sebold
The afterlife narrator novel — Susie Salmon watching from heaven as her family copes with her murder, the closest mainstream fiction equivalent to Lincoln in the Bardo's use of a supernatural vantage point to observe the living.
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