Instantly astounding and enduringly haunting, one of America's greatest writers gives us his most dazzling short story collection yet

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, Guardian Books of the Year 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 Reading George Saunders is, it's safe to say, like no other literary experience. His satirical short stories are set in a kind of Lewis Carroll version of our world, only far, far darker ... surreal, rather moving and deeply angry Observer Both droll and acerbic, his tales cleverly blend slapstick with Orwellian alarm at a society unwilling to safeguard a common morality or independence of thought from the rapacity of an arrogant, aggressive, capitalist ethic Daily Telegraph

At one point a geophysical engineer, MacArthur Fellowship winner George Saunders is an acclaimed writer of short stories, essays, novellas and children's books. His work includes the story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award, Pastoralia and In Persuasion Nation, one of only three finalists for The Story Prize in 2006. He has also won prizes for his bestselling children's book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip and has, most recently, written a book of essays entitled The Brain-Dead Megaphone. He currently teaches Creative Writing at Syracuse University, New York, and writes regularly for GQ, Harper's and The New Yorker, who in 2002 named him one of the 'Best Writers Under 40'. He lives in New York with his family.