The world’s best short story writer … <i>L</i><i>iberation Day</i> is great art
DAILY TELEGRAPH
This is the joy of Saunders: he encapsulates human experience, while always hitting the punchline
FINANCIAL TIMES
Saunders is funny and kind as ever, and his narrative virtuosity puts him up there with the best
- ANNE ENRIGHT, GUARDIAN
The Alan Bennett of small-town America … These stories are not only perfectly pitched; they come with enough comedy to have you grinning and enough empathy to suddenly stop you in your tracks
OBSERVER
A joy. Effortlessly stylish, funny and smart, they come spangled with sadness and a melancholic malaise as Saunders casts an eye over a country teetering towards wreckage
DAILY MAIL
A triumph of storytelling
I PAPER
The Tom Hanks of American letters … A master of the short story … His art speaks to the dreadful present; his open-handed style, his skill as an educator, offer hope by encouraging each individual voice to find courage to speak
NEW STATESMAN
A writer known as much for his formal inventiveness as the sharpness of his satirical wit
INDEPENDENT.CO.UK
A compelling satire of modern America
PROSPECT
In describing the stories, even quoting them, we lose something valuable. That in itself is a measure of great writing. The only way to experience Saunders’s oblique, farcical, tragic world is to dive right in. It will take the top of your head off, but it’s worth it
THE TIMES
George Saunders is that rare contemporary author who is as original as he is beloved … Readers can be assured that all the hallmarks of Saunders’ writing that electrified them from the beginning are present in his new collection, <i>Liberation Day</i>: bold original humor, the blurred view of American life, and the sweet humanity that pierces through it all
TIME
Virtuosic ... The nine stories in<i> Liberation Day </i>are by turn exhilarating, sad, mind-bendingly bizarre and wickedly funny … Perfect
SUNDAY TIMES
Leaves you in awe of his craft
FOYLES
The titan of the modern story returns with a collection of wickedly funny, perceptive and subversive miniatures
WATERSTONES
An exquisite work from a writer whose reach is galactic
OPRAH QUARTERLY
Masterful
I PAPER
Triumphant
BUZZ MAGAZINE
So good it makes you wonder why anyone else bothers
VOGUE
Saunders’ words smell like Hunter S. Thompson, Stephen King, Raymond Carver and David Lynch sharing a spliff in Joni Mitchell’s parking lot
THE WORD FACTORY
A morally passionate, serious writer ... He will be read long after these times have passed
- ZADIE SMITH,
Saunders has revealed himself to be nothing less than an American Gogol: funny, pointed, full of nuance, and always writing with a moral heart. This, his first book of short fiction in nearly a decade, only cements the validity of such a point of view. The nine pieces here are smart and funny, speculative yet at the same time written on a human scale, narratives full of love and loss and longing and the necessity of trying to connect … A tour de force collection that showcases all of Saunders’ many skills
KIRKUS
George Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time
- KHALED HOSSEINI,
What warm, kindhearted and radical writing. Such delicacy, such serious wit. I love it
- MAX PORTER,
He makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We're lucky to have him
- JONATHAN FRANZEN,
A luminous feat of generosity and humanism
- COLSON WHITEHEAD,
Saunders is a true original - restlessly inventive, yet deeply humane
- JENNIFER EGAN,
Funny, poignant – in flashes, deeply moving – light as a feather and consistently weird
- HARI KUNZRU,