Updated October 18, 2017 09:50:37

Photo: Author George Saunders wins the Man Booker Prize. (Reuters: Hannah McKay)

American author George Saunders has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction with Lincoln in the Bardo, a polyphonic symphony of a novel about restless souls adrift in the afterlife.

The book is based on a real visit Abraham Lincoln made in 1862 to the body of his 11-year-old son Willie in a Washington cemetery.

It is narrated by a chorus of characters who are all dead, but unwilling or unable to let go of life.

It is the second year in a row an American has won the $84,000 prize, which was opened to US authors in 2014.

Lincoln in the Bardo juxtaposes the real events of the US Civil War — through passages from historians both real and fictional — with a chorus of otherworldly characters male and female, young and old.

In Tibetan Buddhism, the bardo is the transition state between death and rebirth.

Saunders said he resisted telling the story of Lincoln for 20 years, but the novel, which took four years to write, turned out to be pointedly timely at a divided time for the United States.

He said Lincoln had "a quiet, confident generosity of spirit".

"His compassion and his heart kept growing out even as his own life was becoming more and more difficult," he said.

'"Contrast that with the current administration that seems intent on shrinking the commonwealth of compassion until we can only care about people who are exactly like us. It's a complete eradication of the American ideal."

Baroness Lola Young, who chaired the Booker judging panel, said the novel "stood out because of its innovation, its very different styling, the way in which it paradoxically brought to life these almost-dead souls".

Saunders was awarded the prize by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, during a ceremony at London's medieval Guildhall.

Second American to win

Lincoln in the Bardo is the first novel by Saunders, 58, an acclaimed short story writer who won the Folio Prize in 2014 for his darkly funny story collection Tenth of December.

A former oil-industry engineer who teaches creative writing at Syracuse University in New York state, Saunders is probably best known outside literary circles for a commencement speech he gave in 2013 with the key message "Try to be kinder".

It went viral, became an animated cartoon and was published as a book.

He had been bookies' favourite to win the Man Booker, which usually brings the winning novelist a huge boost in sales and profile.

Saunders beat five other finalists:

• New Yorker Paul Auster's quadruple coming-of-age story 4321
• US writer Emily Fridlund's story of a Midwest teenager, History of Wolves
• Scottish author Ali Smith's Brexit-themed Autumn
• British-Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid's migration story Exit West
• Elmet, debut British novelist Fiona Mozley's novel about a fiercely independent family under threat

Saunders is the second American in a row to win the prize, founded in 1969 and until 2013 limited to writers from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth.

The 2016 winner was Paul Beatty's The Sellout.

The move to admit all English-language writers spurred fears among some British writers and publishers that Americans would come to dominate a prize whose previous winners include Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel.

Ms Young said the judges "don't look at the nationality of the writer. I can say that hand on heart — it's not an issue for us. The sole concern is the book".

Prize organisers said 30 per cent of the 144 books submitted by publishers for consideration this year were American, a figure slightly down from last year.

She said the five jurors met for almost five hours to choose the winner, finally agreeing unanimously on Saunders.

"I'm not going to pretend it was easy," she said.

"We didn't have any major meltdowns at all. But we did have quite fierce debates."

AP

Topics: books-literature, human-interest, awards-and-prizes, fiction, arts-and-entertainment, novel, author

First posted October 18, 2017 08:10:18