The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil

By: George Saunders

Narrated by: George Saunders

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria.

An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone. Over six years in the writing, and brilliantly and beautifully packaged, this novella is Saunders' first stand-alone, book-length work—and his first book for adults in five years.

Includes an original song by the author.
“The Phil Stomp” was written and performed by George Saunders, and recorded, mixed, and mastered by Peter Coleman at Indigital Studios in Santa Cruz, California.

Critic reviews

Praise for George Saunders:

"An astoundingly tuned voice—graceful, dark, authentic, and funny—telling just the kinds of stories we need to get us through these times."—Thomas Pynchon

"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut. His satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A master of distilling the disorders of our time into fiction."—Salon.com

Excellent story

it's a story about real life even though it seems so strange at first. amazing how barbaric humans can be. read for a class, required. really enjoyed. gets people to think, I hope. love the author narrating

loved it!

Loved it! Saunders' inimitable voice puts me in mind of Mark Twain and
James Thurber.

Odd and interesting

This is my second read by George Saunders and I loved it. His imagination is wild and he plays with time in an interesting way. I love his minimalist word choice. I have just enough information to picture these bizarre worlds he creates.

Gogol and Lewis Carroll and Saunders Hold Hands...

...and pass through the Looking Glass...into a strange, strangely invented world. We know this at the very outset, from an absurd first paragraph that tells us what we most need to know about this world. "It’s one thing to be a small country, but the country of Inner Horner was so small only one Inner Hornerite at a time could fit inside, and the other six Inner Hornerites had to wait their turns to live in their own country while standing very timidly in the surrounding country of Outer Horner."

Saunders' Inner and Outer Horner is cluttered with absurdities, absurdities that, as we go along, with its absurd citizenry and its absurd President and its absurdly ambitious Phil of the title, take shape as a parable for our times, a parable of political power gone absolute and thus mad, written by Saunders 11 years earlier than the reality that descended on the world's greatest Democracy...a quick, satisfying novella that should stimulate some readerly thought along one or more of several paths.

4.0 stars

This is a funny and entertaining novella. It’s probably fine for kids too. Saunders also narrates this audiobook, and he’s a really good narrator. It’s hard to believe he wrote this in back 2005. This novel is probably more relevant today than when he first released it. It's a quirky tale, but it's also brief and frightening at the same time.

Overall rating: 4.0 stars