© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
George Saunders did not set out to become one of America’s most admired writers. Trained as a geophysical engineer, he spent years doing hard, unglamorous jobs, including a stint in a slaughterhouse, before turning to fiction in earnest. Yet three decades after his debut, he is now recognised as a master of the short story, a Booker Prize–winning novelist, and, as of this fall, the recipient of the National Book Award for Distinguished Contributions to American Letters.
Saunders’s achievement lies in the way he has expanded the possibilities of American fiction without losing sight of its human core. His stories are often set in warped workplaces or absurd bureaucracies, filled with dark humor and grotesque detail. But beneath the satire is a steady current of compassion and a belief that fiction’s deepest purpose is to remind us of one another’s humanity.
At 66, Saunders shows no signs of slowing down. He continues to teach at Syracuse University, publish new fiction, and experiment with form. His next novel, Vigil, due in 2026, takes aim at corporate hubris through the story of a dying oil executive. For readers newly curious about how he got here, five books map the evolution of his work.
A startling debut that introduced Saunders’s dystopian theme parks and haunted workplaces, where the absurd borders on the tragic. This collection marked him as a satirist in the Kurt Vonnegut line but with his own bruised tenderness.
With stories that trap characters inside bizarre service jobs, most memorably, employees forced to live as Stone Age “cavemen” for tourists, Saunders sharpened his critique of work, performance, and modern alienation.
The collection that made him a household name. Saunders balances menace and mercy in stories like “Escape from Spiderhead,” which places prisoners in a sinister pharmaceutical trial, and “Victory Lap,” a tale of adolescence interrupted by violence. The book became a bestseller and confirmed his ability to move readers as well as unsettle them.
His first novel, a Booker Prize winner, is a cacophonous chorus of voices recounting one night in 1862, when Abraham Lincoln mourns his son Willie. By turns funny and devastating, it’s a novel of grief, history, and radical empathy — and proof that Saunders’s ambition could stretch far beyond the short form.
Part-literary criticism, part-teaching manual, this book distills lessons from decades of introducing Russian masters to his students at Syracuse. Saunders walks readers through stories by Chekhov, Tolstoy, and others.
