Liberation Days

From employees creepily compelled to reenact Custer’s Last Stand in a surreal (if utterly persuasive) account of powerful control from on high, to a grandfather’s pleading letter to a rebellious grandson amid dystopian crisis within a watchful state where loyalists are rewarded and resisters severely punished, Booker Prize winner Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo) reveals just how good he is at suggesting crucial aspects of today’s world in eerie, unexpected settings. In yet another chilling example of overt control, marginalized individuals are being reprogrammed as political protesters, and there’s a hell-themed amusement park readers will likely never want to visit, loaded with expectation and workplace tension. On the surface, Saunders’s language is disturbing and hypnotic, but it’s the currents underneath that really catch readers and pull them under. However surprising the premise or disorienting its unfolding, it’s hard to stop reading.