THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PICKED BY THE SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, IRISH TIMES, SPECTATOR, TLS, NEW STATESMAN, MAIL ON SUNDAY, I PAPER, PROSPECT, REVEW31 AND EVENING STANDARD AS A BOOK OF 2021 'A masterclass from a warm and engagingly enthusiastic companion' Guardian Summer Reading Picks 2021 'This book is a delight, and it's about delight too. How necessary, at our particular moment' Tessa Hadley ________________ From the New York Times-bestselling, Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves - and our world today. For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it's more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, "We're going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn't fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art-namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?" He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

'One of the best science fiction short stories to be published in the 21st century so far' SFX Review ‘Saunders is funny and kind as ever, and his narrative virtuosity puts him up there with the best’ Anne Enright, Guardian ‘A triumph of storytelling’ i paper ‘A joy. 'Effortlessly stylish, funny and smart’ Daily Mail ____________ The first short story collection in ten years from the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo MacArthur genius and Booker Prize-winner George Saunders returns with a collection of short stories that make sense of our increasingly troubled world, his first since the New York Times bestseller and National Book Award finalist Tenth of December The 'best short story writer in English' (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice, and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose - wickedly funny, unsentimental, and perfectly tuned - Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: here is a collection of prismatic, deeply resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality. 'Love Letter' is a tender missive from grandfather to grandson, in the midst of a dystopian political situation in the not-too-distant future, that reminds us of our obligations to our ideals, ourselves, and each other. 'Ghoul' is set in a Hell-themed section of an underground amusement park in Colorado, and follows the exploits of a lonely, morally complex character named Brian, who comes to question everything he takes for granted about his 'reality.' In 'Mother’s Day', two women who loved the same man come to an existential reckoning in the middle of a hailstorm. And in 'Elliott Spencer', our eighty-nine-year-old protagonist finds himself brainwashed - his memory 'scraped' - a victim of a scheme in which poor, vulnerable people are reprogrammed and deployed as political protesters. Together, these nine subversive, profound, and essential stories coalesce into a case for viewing the world with the same generosity and clear-eyed attention as Saunders does, even in the most absurd of circumstances. ____________ '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 'The world’s best short story writer … Liberation Day is great art' Daily Telegraph

WINNER OF THE 2014 FOLIO PRIZE AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013 George Saunders's most wryly hilarious and disturbing collection yet, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations. A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of DarkenfloxxTM in some unusual drug trials; and Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, this collection sings with astonishing charm and intensity.

'We're lucky to have him' Jonathan Franzen 'A morally passionate, serious writer' Zadie Smith 'Here's something I know to be true, although it's a little corny, and I don't quite know what to do with it: What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.' Three months after George Saunders gave a convocation address at Syracuse University, a transcript of that speech was posted on the website of The New York Times, where its simple, uplifting message struck a deep chord. Within days, it had been shared more than one million times. Why? Because Saunders's words tap into a desire in all of us to lead kinder, more fulfilling lives. Powerful, funny, and wise, Congratulations, by the way is an inspiring message from one of today's most influential and original writers.

An enchanting and darkly comic fable of human greed and nature, from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, exquisitely illustrated by Chelsea Cardinal

Fox 8 has always been curious, and a bit of a daydreamer. And, by hiding outside houses at dusk and listening to children's bedtime stories, he has learned to speak 'Yuman'.

The power of words and the stories built from them is intoxicating for a fox with a poetic soul, but there is 'danjur' on the horizon: a new shopping mall is being built, cutting off his pack's food supply. To save himself and his fellow foxes, Fox 8 will have to set out on a harrowing quest from the wilds of nature deep into the dark heart of suburbia.

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Tenth of December," a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables--all in this hilarious and heartbreaking collection from an author hailed as the heir to Kurt Vonnegut and Thomas Pynchon.
"The first thing you ought to know is that Saunders is the funniest writer in America... But] Saunders's laughs are a cover, a diversion, beneath which reside some profoundly serious intentions regarding the morality of how we live and hte power of love and immanent death to transform us into vastly better creatures... I can't think of another writer who would try to do what Saunders is doing, or anything close to it. This is an important book."--"The Nation"
"Saunders is a hilarious, wicked, and pitch-perfect satirist of our times, of course, but for a satirist he has a whole lot of heart."--"Esquire"

`Saunders is an astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny - telling just the kind of stories we need to get us through these times' Thomas Pynchon In PASTORALIA elements of contemporary life are twisted, merged and amplified into a slightly skewed version of modern America. A couple live and work in a caveman theme-park, where speaking is an instantly punishable offence. A born loser attends a self-help seminar where he is encouraged to rid himself of all the people who are `crapping in your oatmeal'. And a male exotic dancer and his family are terrorised by their decomposing aunt who visits them with a solemn message from beyond the grave. With an uncanny combination of deadpan naturalism and uproarious humour, George Saunders creates a world that is both indelibly original and yet hauntingly familiar ...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST - NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY "THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW"
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
"People - The New York Times Magazine - "NPR - "Entertainment Weekly - New York - BuzzFeed - Kirkus Reviews - BookPage - Shelf Awareness"
Includes an extended conversation with David Sedaris
One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and "Tenth of December" is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.
In the taut opener, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antiques store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill--the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of "Tenth of December" are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders's signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.
Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.
Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in "Tenth of December"--through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit--not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness."
"NEW YORK TIMES "BESTSELLER
"The best book you'll read this year."--"The New York Times Magazine"
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"A feat of inventiveness . . . This eclectic collection never ceases to delight with its at times absurd, surreal, and darkly humorous look at very serious subjects. . . . George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time."--Khaled Hosseini, author of "The Kite Runner"
"The best short-story writer in English--not 'one of, ' not 'arguably, ' but the Best."--Mary Karr, "Time "
"A visceral and moving act of storytelling . . . No one writes more powerfully than George Saunders about the lost, the unlucky, the disenfranchised."--Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times"
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"Saunders's startling, dreamlike stories leave you feeling newly awakened to the world."--"People"
GEORGE SAUNDERS WAS NAMED ONE OF THE 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD BY "TIME" MAGAZINE

The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War

The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.

From this seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a thrilling, supernatural domain both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself trapped in a transitional realm - called, in Tibetan tradition, the bardo - and as ghosts mingle, squabble, gripe and commiserate, and stony tendrils creep towards the boy, a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.

Unfolding over a single night, Lincoln in the Bardo is written with George Saunders' inimitable humour, pathos and grace. Here he invents an exhilarating new form, and is confirmed as one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Deploying a theatrical, kaleidoscopic panoply of voices - living and dead, historical and fictional - Lincoln in the Bardo poses a timeless question: how do we live and love when we know that everything we hold dear must end?

From the No. 1 New York Times Bestselling Author of the novel Lincoln in the Bardo, and the story collection Tenth of December, winner of the Folio Prize for Fiction 2014 Welcome to Inner Horner, a nation so small it can only accommodate one citizen at a time. But when Inner Horner suddenly shrinks, forcing three-quarters of the citizen in residence over the border into Outer Horner territory, the Outer Hornerites declare an Invasion in Progress, having fallen under the spell of the power-hungry and demagogic Phil. So begins his brief and very frightening reign...

From the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of the 2017 Man Booker Prize winner Lincoln in the Bardo

Talking candy bars, baby geniuses, disappointed mothers, castrated dogs, interned teenagers, and moral fables - all in this hilarious and heartbreaking collection by George Saunders, this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humour, for a time when we need it most.

In this, his first collection of essays, Saunders trains his eye on the real world rather than the fictional and reveals it to be brimming with wonderful, marvellous strangeness. As he faces a political and cultural reality saturated with lazy media, false promises and political doublespeak, Saunders invokes the wisdom of American literary heroes Twain, Vonnegut and Barthelme and inspires us to re-examine our assumptions about the world we live in, as we struggle to discover what is really there.

A gapper is a bit of a 'burr' but it is a dangerous thing. When it attaches itself to the goats the goats become very unhappy and even stop giving milk. There is nothing gappers like more than goats and nothing goats hate more than gappers. When gappers get your goats it means trouble. In one small town gappers are a real pest and it takes the ingenious approach of Capable to find a soution - if a solution exists at all.

From the "New York Times" bestselling author of "Tenth of December," a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.
The breakout book from "the funniest writer in America"--not to mention an official "Genius"--his first nonfiction collection ever.
George Saunders's first foray into nonfiction is comprised of essays on literature, travel, and politics. At the core of this unique collection are Saunders's travel essays based on his trips to seek out the mysteries of the "Buddha Boy" of Nepal; to attempt to indulge in the extravagant pleasures of Dubai; and to join the exploits of the minutemen at the Mexican border. Saunders expertly navigates the works of Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and Esther Forbes, and leads the reader across the rocky political landscape of modern America. Emblazoned with his trademark wit and singular vision, Saunders's endeavor into the art of the essay is testament to his exceptional range and ability as a writer and thinker.
From the author of "Tenth of December."..

"NEW YORK TIMES "BESTSELLER
Three months after George Saunders gave a graduation address at Syracuse University, a transcript of that speech was posted on the website of "The New York Times, " where its simple, uplifting message struck a deep chord. Within days, it had been shared more than one million times. Why? Because Saunders's words tap into a desire in all of us to lead kinder, more fulfilling lives. Powerful, funny, and wise, "Congratulations, by the way" is an inspiring message from one of today's most influential and original writers.
Praise for "Congratulations, by the way"
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"As slender as a psalm, and as heavy."--"The New York Times"
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"The graduating college senior in your life probably just wants money. But if you want to impart some heartfelt, plainspoken wisdom in addition to a check, you can't do much better than "Congratulations, by the way"]."--"Entertainment Weekly"
"The loving selflessness that George Saunders] advises and the interconnectedness that he recognizes couldn't be purer or simpler--or more challenging."--"Kirkus Reviews"
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"Warm and tender."--"Publishers Weekly"

"An eclectic and often riveting collection of essays. Some of the most celebrated contemporary writers eloquently explore the idea of risk taking, risk that shakes us out of apathy and ignites both deeply personal change and broader social transformation." -Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns "Dedicated to the People of Darfur gathers an array of voices on the subject of risk: whether it's the smaller daily risks of creativity and love or the terrors of facing wartime violence. The book moves nimbly from hilarious to somber and back again, in a richly varied and thoughtful exploration of the human condition." -Michelle Wildgen, author of But Not For Long and You're Not You "Formidable, inspiring, beautiful." -Junot Diaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao In Dedicated to the People of Darfur: Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, a gallery of O. Henry award recipients, and many best-selling authors come together to share personal and compelling stories that celebrate the glories gained from taking risks, breaking down barriers, and overcoming obstacles. Not too long ago, as struggling graduate students, Luke and Jennifer Reynolds conceived this uniquely themed volume as a way to raise funds to support ending the genocide in Darfur. Some people carry signs, others make speeches, many take action. What is most enlightening about this book is that it extends beyond words and ideas, into a tangible effort to effect change. To this end, all royalties from the sales of Dedicated to the People of Darfur: Writings on Fear, Risk, and Hope will benefit The Save Darfur Coalition, an organization that seeks to end the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Luke and Jennifer Reynolds are both passionate about human rights causes and literature. Currently they live in Marlborough, Massachusetts, with their son, Tyler. Luke is a teacher and writer and Jennifer is a freelance writer and full-time mother.

Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny," George Saunders now surpasses his New York Times Notable Book, CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, with this bestselling collection of stories set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape.

One of Entertainment Weekly’s Ten Best Books of the Year

'This is a collection full of energy and stunning, quiet innovation ... it spills over with contempt, raucous humour, sadness and generosity. In it, life and language are synonymous, and there is no higher praise. What a wonderful book' Ali Smith Here are all Grace Paley's classic stories in one volume. Paley's quirky, boisterous characters and rich use of language won her readers' hearts and secured her place as one of America's most accomplished short-story writers. Her stories are united by her signature interweaving of personal and political truths, her extraordinary capacity for empathy and her pointed depiction of the small and large events that make up daily life. 'A writer like Paley comes along and brightens up language again, takes it aside and gives it a pep talk, sends it back renewed, so it can do its job, which is to wake us up' George Saunders 'Grace Paley makes me weep and laugh - and admire. She is that rare kind of writer, a natural, with a voice like no one else's: funny, sad, lean, modest, energetic, acute' Susan Sontag 'Grace Paley is the most intelligent, generous, incorruptible writer I ever knew' Ursula K. Le Guin