Vigil by George Saunders.jpg
Vigil by George Saunders.jpg

Vigil by George Saunders

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Hardcover:

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A scorching portrait of modern America. And yet it also brings a sense of sense of hope, not only because [it] reminds us how powerful a great novel can be, but because of the sense . . . that a universal justice will prevail.”—R. J. Palacio for Time, “25 Books That Capture This American Moment”

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE SUMMER

A “spectacular” (Los Angeles Times) novel from the 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

“Vibrant, fiendishly clever . . . Vigil is pure Saunders: the death of empathy, he insists, is greatly exaggerated.” — The Boston Globe

Jill "Doll" Blaine has spent years guiding the dying into whatever comes next. She's seen it all—regret, fear, unfinished business. But K.J. Boone, the oil magnate she's sent to attend in his final hours, isn't interested in any of it.

As Boone's Texas mansion fills with visitors both living and dead, the walls of denial start to crack. Birds gather on the lawn. A black calf wanders out of nowhere. And one by one, the people Boone spent his life avoiding start arriving at his door.

Jill has her own ghosts to contend with—a decades-old trauma she's never fully laid to rest. As the night stretches on, guiding Boone becomes something closer to a reckoning for them both.

Blending the moral imagination of Lincoln in the Bardo with the sly comedy of his short fiction, Vigil is George Saunders at his most urgent: a ghost story about legacy, accountability, and the last chance we get to change.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A scorching portrait of modern America. And yet it also brings a sense of sense of hope, not only because [it] reminds us how powerful a great novel can be, but because of the sense . . . that a universal justice will prevail.”—R. J. Palacio for Time, “25 Books That Capture This American Moment”

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE SUMMER

A “spectacular” (Los Angeles Times) novel from the 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

“Vibrant, fiendishly clever . . . Vigil is pure Saunders: the death of empathy, he insists, is greatly exaggerated.” — The Boston Globe

Jill "Doll" Blaine has spent years guiding the dying into whatever comes next. She's seen it all—regret, fear, unfinished business. But K.J. Boone, the oil magnate she's sent to attend in his final hours, isn't interested in any of it.

As Boone's Texas mansion fills with visitors both living and dead, the walls of denial start to crack. Birds gather on the lawn. A black calf wanders out of nowhere. And one by one, the people Boone spent his life avoiding start arriving at his door.

Jill has her own ghosts to contend with—a decades-old trauma she's never fully laid to rest. As the night stretches on, guiding Boone becomes something closer to a reckoning for them both.

Blending the moral imagination of Lincoln in the Bardo with the sly comedy of his short fiction, Vigil is George Saunders at his most urgent: a ghost story about legacy, accountability, and the last chance we get to change.

  • Publisher: Random House

    Title: Vigil

    Author: George Saunders

    On Sale Date: January 27, 2026

    ISBN 13: 9780525509622

    ISBN 10: 0525509623

    Format: Hardcover

    Retail Price: $28.00

    BISAC: Literary Fiction / Gothic & Horror

    Page Count: 192

    Dimensions: 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 in.

  • George Saunders is the author of nine books, including the Booker Prize–winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collections Pastoralia and Tenth of December. He has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Guggenheim Foundation, along with a MacArthur Fellowship. He teaches at Syracuse University.

  • Readers are calling it wise, unsettling, and darkly funny:

    • The most purely entertaining Saunders since Lincoln in the Bardo.

    • A book readers finish in one sitting and immediately want to reread the ending.

    • The multi-narrator audiobook is getting singled out as a standout.

    • Proof that Saunders can do in under 200 pages what most novels can't do in 400.

This book is for you if

  • You loved the moral imagination and afterlife setting of Lincoln in the Bardo.

  • You want a ghost story that's really a reckoning with power, legacy, and capitalism.

  • You like fiction with real bite: oil executives, swarming birds, a wandering black calf.

  • You're drawn to short novels that hit far above their page count.

  • You want a book that's as funny as it is unsettling.

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