Lincoln in the Bardo-林肯在中阴-林肯在巴尔多

作者：Saunders George

书名：Lincoln in the Bardo《林肯在中阴》or《林肯在巴尔多》

中文简介：《林肯在中阴》（英语：Lincoln in the Bardo）是美国作家乔治·桑德斯于2017年出版的生涯首部长篇小说。

西元一八六二年，南北战争未满一年，美国第十六任总统亚伯拉罕·林肯的十一岁儿子威利‧林肯因病过世。当威利成为墓园的新住客，引来了三位热心的鬼魂关切，分别是汉斯‧沃门、罗杰‧贝文斯三世以及艾维力‧汤姆斯牧师，正当他们苦口婆心劝威利切勿逗留墓园之际，突然一位身形瘦长的高帽绅士来访，原来林肯趁深夜独自来悼念他深爱的孩儿。故事发生在一个处于生与死之间的过渡之境，也就是所谓的中阴。作者通过佛教“中阴”的概念来呈现威利墓地上的悲伤幻象，同时也揭示了林肯作为父亲的悲伤和他决定“勇敢面对，解决问题”的关键决定之间的联系。

英文简介：In his long-awaited first novel, American master George Saunders delivers his most original, transcendent, and moving work yet. Unfolding in a graveyard over the course of a single night, narrated by a dazzling chorus of voices, Lincoln in the Bardo is a literary experience unlike any other—for no one but Saunders could conceive it.

February 1862. The Civil War is less than one year old. The fighting has begun in earnest, and the nation has begun to realize it is in for a long, bloody struggle. Meanwhile, President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, lies upstairs in the White House, gravely ill. In a matter of days, despite predictions of a recovery, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. “My poor boy, he was too good for this earth,” the president says at the time. “God has called him home.” Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returned to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.

From that seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of its realistic, historical framework into a thrilling, supernatural realm both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself in a strange purgatory, where ghosts mingle, gripe, commiserate, quarrel, and enact bizarre acts of penance. Within this transitional state—called, in the Tibetan tradition, the bardo—a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.

Lincoln in the Bardo is an astonishing feat of imagination and a bold step forward from one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Formally daring, generous in spirit, deeply concerned with matters of the heart, it is a testament to fiction’s ability to speak honestly and powerfully to the things that really matter to us. Saunders has invented a thrilling new form that deploys a kaleidoscopic, theatrical panorama of voices—living and dead, historical and invented—to ask a timeless, profound question: How do we live and love when we know that everything we love must end?