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Lincoln in the Bardo wins Booker Prize

LONDON 鈥 American author George Saunders won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday with Lincoln in the Bardo, a polyphonic symphony of a novel about restless souls adrift in the afterlife. The book is based on a real visit U.S.
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American author George Saunders with his novel Lincoln in the Bardo, a surrealistic tale based on a real visit U.S. President Abraham Lincoln made to the body of his 11-year-old son in a Washington graveyard.

LONDON 鈥 American author George Saunders won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction Tuesday with Lincoln in the Bardo, a polyphonic symphony of a novel about restless souls adrift in the afterlife.

The book is based on a real visit U.S. President Abraham Lincoln made in 1862 to the body of his 11-year-old son Willie in a Washington cemetery. It is narrated by a chorus of characters who are all dead, but unwilling or unable to let go of life.

It is the second year in a row an American has won the 50,000 pound ($75,000 Cdn) prize, which was opened to U.S. authors in 2014.

By turns witty, bawdy, poetic and unsettling, Lincoln in the Bardo juxtaposes the real events of the U.S. Civil War 鈥 through passages from historians both real and fictional 鈥 with a chorus of otherworldly characters male and female, young and old. In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the transition state between death and rebirth.

Saunders was awarded the prize by Prince Charles鈥檚 wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a ceremony at London鈥檚 medieval Guildhall.

Accepting his trophy, Saunders said the book鈥檚 style might be complex, but the question he posed at its heart was simple: Do we respond to uncertain times with fear and division, 鈥渙r do we take that ancient great leap of faith and try to respond with love?

The author said he resisted telling the story of Lincoln, an American icon, for 20 years. But the novel, which took four years to write, turned out to be pointedly timely at a divided time for the United States.

Saunders said Lincoln had 鈥渁 quiet, confident generosity of spirit.鈥

鈥淗e underwent, I think, a kind of spiritual growth spurt that we don鈥檛 see very often,鈥 outgrowing the 鈥渓azy, racist attitudes鈥 he was raised with, the author said.

鈥淗is compassion and his heart kept growing out even as his own life was becoming more and more difficult,鈥 Saunders said.

Baroness Lola Young, who chaired the Booker judging panel, said the novel 鈥渟tood out because of its innovation, its very different styling, the way in which it paradoxically brought to life these almost-dead souls.鈥

Lincoln in the Bardo is the first novel by the 58-year-old Saunders, an acclaimed short story writer who won the Folio Prize in 2014 for his darkly funny story collection Tenth of December.

A former oil-industry engineer who teaches creative writing at Syracuse University in New York state, Saunders is probably best known outside literary circles for a commencement speech he gave in 2013 with the key message: 鈥淭ry to be kinder.鈥

It went viral on the Internet, became an animated cartoon and was published as a book.

He had been bookies鈥 favourite to win the Man Booker, which usually brings the winning novelist a huge boost in sales and profile.

Saunders beat five other finalists: New Yorker Paul Auster鈥檚 quadruple coming-of-age story 4321; U.S. writer Emily Fridlund鈥檚 story of a Midwest teenager, History of Wolves; Scottish author Ali Smith鈥檚 Brexit-themed Autumn; British-Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid鈥檚 migration story Exit West; and Elmet, debut British novelist Fiona Mozley鈥檚 novel about a fiercely independent family under threat.

Saunders is the second American in a row to win the prize, founded in 1969 and until 2013 limited to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth. The 2016 winner was Paul Beatty鈥檚 The Sellout.

The move to admit all English-language writers spurred fears among some British writers and publishers that Americans would come to dominate a prize whose previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.

Young said the judges 鈥渄on鈥檛 look at the nationality of the writer. I can say that hand on heart 鈥 it鈥檚 not an issue for us. The sole concern is the book.鈥