Facts about Lincoln in the Bardo

1. 05

   Saunders drew inspiration from Walt Whitman's 1865 poem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd, which also commemorates Lincoln's death and grief.

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2. 04

   Saunders structured Lincoln in the Bardo using hundreds of historical documents, quotes, and invented sources formatted as footnotes throughout the novel's 368 pages.

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3. 03

   Over 150 fictional characters populate Lincoln in the Bardo's graveyard, each providing fragmented monologues that construct the novel's experimental narrative structure.

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4. 02

   The novel's narrative unfolds across a single night in 1865 within a Washington D.C. cemetery as President Lincoln grieves his son Willie's death.

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5. 01

   George Saunders won the 2017 Man Booker Prize for Lincoln in the Bardo, his debut novel published in 2017.

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