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Liberation Day

By: George Saunders
Narrated by: George Saunders, Tina Fey, Michael McKean, Edi Patterson, Jenny Slate, Jack McBrayer, Melora Hardin, Stephen Root
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Publisher's Summary

The first short story collection in ten years from the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo.

Audio read by Stephen Root, Jack McBrayer, Edi Patterson, Melora Hardin, Michael McKean, Jenny Slate, George Saunders, Tina Fey.

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.

©2022 George Saunders (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic Reviews

"A morally passionate, serious writer.... He will be read long after these times have passed." (Zadie Smith)

"George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time." (Khaled Hosseini)

"What warm, kind-hearted and radical writing. Such delicacy, such serious wit. I love it." (Max Porter)

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beautiful stories, beautifully read

Some stories, of course, resonate more than others, but there are some real crackers in this collection. The voice performance, and the fractured syntax, of one story in particular (Elliot Spencer) was just stunning.

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