All articles tagged with #george saunders
George Saunders’s Vigil is a slim, afterlife-set novel in which an angel counsels an oil-tycoon on his deathbed. Dwight Garner’s review praises Saunders’s wit and the concept but argues the book’s heavy-handed moralizing and explicit virtue-talk weigh it down, delivering more sermon than story and predicting it will be a bestseller despite its didactic tone.
In a thoughtful review, Pico Iyer praises George Saunders’s Vigil for its humane, unsparing inquiry into reality, suffering, and death, using supernatural figures to blow up political binaries and echo Saunders’s border reporting and Buddhist practice; the piece situates Vigil with Lincoln in the Bardo as part of Saunders’s ongoing project of empathy across divides.
In a Guardian interview, George Saunders discusses Vigil, his new ghost story about an oil tycoon who hid climate science and is visited by spirits on his deathbed, using supernatural perspectives to probe truth, mortality and empathy while reflecting on his life, craft and politics in Trump-era America.
The article previews major upcoming fiction releases in 2026, including works by renowned authors like George Saunders, Ali Smith, Julian Barnes, Maggie O’Farrell, and China Miéville, covering themes from environmental crises to personal memory, with notable sequels and debut novels set to captivate readers throughout the year.