Lincoln in the Bardo

Background

The novel was inspired by a story Saunders's wife's cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie's crypt at Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown on several occasions to hold the body,^[8] a story that seems to be verified by contemporary newspaper accounts.^[9] In March 2017, Saunders provided more detail on the background and conception of his novel:

Many years ago, during a visit to Washington DC, my wife's cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that, in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was president, his beloved son, Willie, died, and was temporarily interred in that crypt, and that the grief-stricken Lincoln had, according to the newspapers of the day, entered the crypt "on several occasions" to hold the boy's body. An image spontaneously leapt into my mind—a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pietà. I carried that image around for the next 20-odd years, too scared to try something that seemed so profound, and then finally, in 2012, noticing that I wasn't getting any younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read "Afraid to Embark on Scary Artistic Project He Desperately Longed to Attempt", decided to take a run at it, in exploratory fashion, no commitments. My novel, Lincoln in the Bardo, is the result of that attempt [...].^[10]

Saunders first announced the novel in a 2015 New York Times interview with the novelist Jennifer Egan, revealing that it would have a "supernatural element" while remaining "ostensibly historical".^[11] The novel's title was announced in a conversation between Saunders and Susan Sarandon in Interview magazine, in April 2016.^[12] That same month, a description of the book was posted on the Random House website.^[13]

Development

Saunders did not originally intend to write a novel (and had avoided doing so in the past^[14][10][15]), but the story of Lincoln cradling his son's body stayed with him, and he eventually decided to write about it.^[8] The novel began as a single section, and was fleshed out over time.^[8]

To produce the book, Saunders conducted extensive research on Lincoln and the Civil War, consulting, among other books, Edmund Wilson's Patriotic Gore (1962).^[16] Saunders rearranged historical sources to get at the "necessary historical facts", and included excerpts from them in the novel.^[15] Many of these sources are cited in the book, along with some fictional ones.^[17]

In a The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast with David Remnick, Saunders described how a melancholic Lincoln the Mystic statue, sculpted by James Earle Fraser, propelled him through the novel. The statue is in front of his office at Syracuse University, near the Tolley Hall.^[18][19]

Saunders has said that he was "scared to write this book". He worried about his ability to portray Lincoln, but decided that limiting his characterization to a single night made the writing process "not easy, but easier, because I knew just where he was in his trajectory as president".^[20] Given that his work is generally set in the present, Saunders compared writing a novel set in 1862 to "running with leg weights" because he "couldn't necessarily do the voices that I would naturally create".^[21]

Audiobook

Saunders has typically recorded his stories' audiobook adaptations himself,^[23] but given this novel's cast of 166 characters, he did not feel he could be the sole voice actor. His friend Nick Offerman agreed early in the production process to take a role, as did Offerman's wife, Megan Mullally. The two then recruited Don Cheadle, Julianne Moore, Susan Sarandon, and Rainn Wilson. Non-celebrities with parts include Saunders's wife, his children, and various friends.^[23] Other notable narrators include Carrie Brownstein, Kat Dennings, Lena Dunham, Bill Hader, Miranda July, Mary Karr, Keegan-Michael Key, David Sedaris, Ben Stiller, Jeffrey Tambor, Jeff Tweedy, Bradley Whitford, and Patrick Wilson.^[24]

Films

Mullally and Offerman purchased the rights to produce a film version of the novel five weeks after it was released.^[25] In 2017, Graham Sack wrote and directed a short film adaptation of the book.^[26]

As of 2025, another film adaptation is being produced by Duke Johnson,^[27] featuring Andre Holland.^[28] Tom Hanks is set to play Lincoln while producing through his Playtone company.^[29]

Opera

The Metropolitan Opera commissioned Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek to adapt the book into an opera, with a debut scheduled for October 2026.^[30]

Critical reception

In The New York Times, novelist Colson Whitehead called the book "a luminous feat of generosity and humanism".^[31] Time magazine listed it as one of its top ten novels of 2017,^[32] and Paste ranked it the fifth-best novel of the 2010s.^[33] In 2024, The New York Times named it the 18th-best book of the 21st century.^[34]

The novel has been compared to Edgar Lee Masters's poetry collection Spoon River Anthology.^[35][22][36] Tim Martin, writing for Literary Review, compared its "babble of American voices", some from primary sources and some expertly fabricated, to the last act of Thornton Wilder's play Our Town.^[37]

The novel won the 2017 Booker Prize.^[7]

Sales

The novel was listed as a bestseller in the United States by The New York Times and USA Today.^[38][39]