Vigil

A Novel

By: George Saunders

An electric novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo, taking place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the next

Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.

She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?

Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.

With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.

Critic reviews

Praise for Vigil

“A magnificent expansion of consciousness . . . Saunders has crafted a novel that feels deeply resonant, especially in these fractious times.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Staggering . . . Saunders has outdone himself with this endlessly irreverent work of art.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review



Praise for George Saunders

“Saunders is the most humane American writer working today.”—Harper’s Magazine

“Saunders captures the fragmented rhythms, disjointed sensory input, and wildly absurd realities of the twenty-first-century experience like no other writer.”—The Boston Globe

“Part of the Saunders elixir is that we feel more empathetic after reading his work.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Saunders makes you feel as though you are reading fiction for the first time.”—Khaled Hosseini

“Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality, with a sure sense of his material and apparently inexhaustible resources of voice.”—Tobias Wolff

“Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless.”—Jonathan Franzen

“Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”—Zadie Smith