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Liberation Day
Paperback

Liberation Day

$22.99
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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.

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MORE INFO
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Country
United Kingdom
Date
27 February 2024
Pages
256
ISBN
9781526624994

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.

Read More
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Country
United Kingdom
Date
27 February 2024
Pages
256
ISBN
9781526624994
 
Book Review

Liberation Day
by George Saunders

by Rosalind McClintock, Sep 2022

I admit, I have never read George Saunders, which makes me some sort of short-story philistine I believe, and I love short stories. So, I am afraid I cannot compare this collection to his previous works. What I can tell you is that these nine stories are startling. They are dark, spiky, sad and imbued at times with a dark humour. They explore class, power and morality in near-future dystopias (and to be frank, some of them are current dystopias). As a reader you are never comfortable, but you are kind of complicit.

Saunders’ clever ordering of stories makes what at first seems improbable, probable. For example, we start with the title story, ‘Liberation Day’, in which some humans have given up their lives and memories to be part of a human storytelling machine. These ‘speakers’ spend their days silently pinioned to the wall of a special room in a rich family’s house. Once they are switched on, through an orchestration of tempo, pulse and other settings, they begin to tell stories to entertain said rich person and their peers. I finished the story amused and slightly disturbed, but not quite believing in the premise.

Yet, as I progressed through the book my idea of the possible shifted. He is clever, isn’t he, Saunders? By making us privy to characters’ unbridled internal monologues – whether it be the mother imagining exacting revenge on ‘some old guy’ who pushed her son, a grandfather urging his grandson to go against his best intentions, or the power dynamics of an office where Saunders effortlessly shifts between points of view – he slowly buildsa case for the improbable. Each story, to some degree, exposes human pettiness and weakness, highlighting power imbalances and the fragility of our ecosystem. I was left thinking, how irritating humans really are, but also how sad, beautiful and hopeful. The revolution is coming, but is there any hope it will succeed?


Rosalind McClintock is the marketing manager at Readings.