Tenth of December - Hardcover

Saunders, George

3.98

74,429 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 140883734X ISBN 13: 9781408837344

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013

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From the undisputed master of the short story, George Saunders, comes a dazzling and disturbing new collection. His most wryly hilarious work to date, Tenth of December illuminates human experience and explores figures lost in a labyrinth of troubling preoccupations.

A family member recollects a backyard pole dressed for all occasions; Divisional Director Todd Birnie sends round a memo to employees he thinks need some inspiration; Jeff faces horrifying ultimatums and the prospect of DarkenfloxxT in some unusual drug trials; and in an auction of local celebrities Al Roosten hides his own internal monologue behind a winning smile that he hopes will make him popular. Although, as a young boy discovers, sometimes the voices fade and all you are left with is a frozen hill on a cold day in December...

With dark visions of the future riffing against ghosts of the past and the ever-settling present, Tenth of December sings with astonishing charm and intensity, and re-affirms Saunders as one of our greatest living storytellers.

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Review:

A joyous, mad, brilliant, laugh-out-loud box of tricks from one of America's most daring writers. Delicious, delicious, delicious. I could read Saunders forever (Liz Jensen)

Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny with a prose style this fine. Saunders is a morally passionate, serious writer, who perfectly expresses the madness of the times we live in. He will be read long after these times have passed (Zadie Smith)

Again and again, Saunders demonstrates that wacky, subversive, formally strange writing is not only not contrary to our nation's capitalist spirit, it's the most natural and effective of responses to it. He makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We're lucky to have him (Jonathan Franzen)

Saunders reads like Barthelme or Coover, and can be funnier than either (Hari Kunzru, Books of the Year Guardian)

Surreal and puncturing (Margaret Atwood)

Saunders, as an American social and literary critic, may be shaping up as the Orwell of the millennium (The Times)

An astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic, and funny (Thomas Pynchon)

A multifaceted writer, very easy on the surface to pin down but incredibly difficult once you actually read him with any depth (Joshua Ferris)

Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice ... Scary, hilarious and unforgettable (Tobias Wolff)

Like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut ... Mr. Saunders's satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny (Michiko Kakutani The New York Times)

Book Description:

SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2013.

The no.3 New York Times bestseller. George Saunders's most dazzling short story collection yet

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