A new George Saunders novel is coming this winter.
Random House announced today that a brand new novel by George Saunders will be landing on bookshelves this winter, on January 27, 2026. Vigil takes “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.” (After Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders is cornering the post-death literature market, it seems.)
Here’s the full description of the book from the publisher:
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 three hundred and forty-three 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 life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?
Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of an epic, complicated life. Crowds of people and animals—worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead—arrive, clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room, a black calf grazes on the loveseat, a man from a distant drought-ravaged village materializes, two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s post-death future.
With the acuity 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.
“I found myself wondering about that generation of climate change deniers who, through obfuscation and spin, put progress on hold for twenty or thirty years, and are now old and passing away,” Saunders said in a statement. “I wondered whether such a person might, at the end of his life, feel inclined to repentance. If he had a chance to explain himself, would he try? Could he even do it? What I loved about writing this book was how it stretched me. I’m always hoping a book will lead me into new territory—of voice, intensity, moral positioning—and Vigil really did that. Writing it felt like a real adventure.”
Pre-order it here.
