CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella

Offering a witty portrait of America in the near future, this collection of six short stories and a novella--including "Bounty" and "Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz"--takes a pointed look at such topics as corporate hypocrisy, marital discord, and virtual reality. A first collection. 15,000 first printing.
Since its publication in 1996, George Saunders’s debut collection has grown in estimation from a cherished cult classic to a masterpiece of the form and inspired an entire generation of writers. In six stories (“CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” “Isabelle,” “The Wavemaker Falters,” “The 400-Pound CEO,” “Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz,” “Downtrodden Mary’s Failed Campaign of Terror”) and a novella (“Bounty”), Saunders introduces readers to an unforgettable cast of characters struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world. Praise for George Saunders and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline “There is no author I recommend to people more often—for ten years I’ve urged George Saunders onto everyone and everyone. You want funny? Saunders is your man. You want emotional heft? Saunders again. You want stories that are actually about something—stories that again and again get to the meat of matters of life and death and justice and country? Saunders. There is no one better, no one more essential to our national sense of self and sanity.”—Dave Eggers “The debut of an exciting new voice in fiction . . . Saunders’s satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it’s also ferocious and very funny.”—Michiko Kakutani,The New York Times “Not since Twain has America produced a satirist this funny.”—Zadie Smith “George Saunders makes the all-but-impossible look effortless. We’re lucky to have him.”—Jonathan Franzen “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 “In CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, George Saunders is improvising around a single scary note. Few writers have sounded it with such clarity, boldness, and wit.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer “Subversive, hilarious, and emotionally piercing. Few writers can encompass that range of adjectives, but Saunders is a true original—restlessly inventive, yet deeply humane.”—Jennifer Egan “This book is a rare event: a brilliant new satirist bursting out of the gate in full stride, wildly funny, pure, generous—all that a great humorist should be.”—Garrison Keillor “(Saunders has] shades of both Denis Johnson and Raymond Chandler. . . . By turns he’s ferocious, witty, and uproarious, but what makes his fiction memorable is the gravitas of its dark portraiture of America.”—The Boston Globe