Books by George Saunders
“And—okay, fine, technically not a novel, but—I should also note that George Saunders (who won the Booker Prize in 2017 for his brilliantly funny and surreal first novel Lincoln in the Bardo) has a new book out in mid-October. In Liberation Day, Saunders returns to his first love—the short story—and transports us into a hell-themed amusement park and a near-future police state. (If you can’t wait, make sure you’ve read his storytelling masterclass A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, adapted from a course on Russian short stories that he has taught at Syracuse University for twenty years.)” Read more...
Notable New Novels of Fall 2022
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
by George Saunders
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, the latest book by George Saunders, is the ultimate writing class. He goes through short stories by four Russian writers—Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy and Turgenev—paragraph by paragraph or page by page to understand how they work, how they keep our interest, how they surprise us and what they tell us. He breaks them down to their skeletons and then shows how they are built up again. The book is an amazing journey into the mechanics/engineering/physics of stories, and why it is they do what they do.
Lincoln in the Bardo: A Novel
by George Saunders
George Saunders' wild ride of a novel, set in the cemetery where Abraham Lincoln's young son has been recently buried, takes excitingly experimental form. Be ready for rude ghosts, spectral humour, and a polyphonic chorus of voices.
Interviews where books by George Saunders were recommended
Booker Prize-Winning Novels
The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize was Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, the first novel to win the prize that’s set in space. Below, our list of all the Booker Prize-winning novels of the last twenty years.
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1
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
by George Saunders -
2
Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing
by Chris Bail -
3
Ethel Rosenberg: An American Tragedy
by Anne Sebba -
4
Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey toward Equity
by Claudia Goldin -
5
River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
by Cat Jarman
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2021, recommended by Sophie Roell
The Best Nonfiction Books of 2021, recommended by Sophie Roell
As the Covid pandemic gets another lease of life with the appearance of the omicron variant, those of us spending additional time at home may need a few more books to read. Here, Five Books editor Sophie Roell shares some of her favourite nonfiction books of the year, from history to economics, lessons on how to write like Chekhov to the part each of us can play in reducing political polarization.
Notable New Novels of Fall 2022, recommended by Cal Flyn
Fall is a busy time in publishing, as the biggest names in fiction prepare to release new books in the months leading up to Christmas. Here, Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn rounds up some of the most notable novels of Fall 2022—including two new books from the great American novelist Cormac McCarthy and a sumptuous work of historical fiction from Maggie O’Farrell.
