The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil - Softcover

Saunders, George

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1594481520 ISBN 13: 9781594481529

Publisher: Riverhead Books, 2005

Synopsis

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

In a profoundly strange country called Inner Horner, large enough for only one resident at a time, citizens waiting to enter the country fall under the rule of the power-hungry and tyrannical Phil, setting off a chain of injustice and mass hysteria.

An Animal Farm for the 21st century, this is an incendiary political satire of unprecedented imagination, spiky humor, and cautionary appreciation for the hysteric in everyone. Over six years in the writing, and brilliantly and beautifully packaged, this novella is Saunders' first stand-alone, book-length work—and his first book for adults in five years.

 

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Review:

Book Description
Welcome to Inner Horner, a nation so small it can only accommodate one citizen at a time. The other six citizens must wait their turns in the Short-Term Residency Zone of the surrounding country of Outer Horner. It's a long-standing arrangement between the fantastical, not-exactly-human citizens of the two countries. But when Inner Horner suddenly shrinks, forcing three-quarters of the citizen then in residence over the border into Outer Horner territory, the Outer Hornerites declare an Invasion In Progress--having fallen under the spell of the power-hungry and demagogic Phil.

So begins The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil. Fueled by Saunders's unrivaled wit, outlandish imagination, and incisive political sensibility, here is a deeply strange yet strangely familiar fable of power and impotence, justice and injustice--an Animal Farm for our times.

Praise for George Saunders Author of Pastoralia and Civilwarland in Bad Decline

"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

"Mr. Saunders writes like the illegitimate offspring of Nathanael West and Kurt Vonnegut. [His] satiric vision of America is dark and demented; it is also ferocious and very funny."
--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"A master of distilling the disorders of our time into fiction."
--Salon.com

Amazon.com Exclusive
Want to know the story behind the story of award-winning author George Saunders's new novella, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil? Then read "Why I Wrote Phil," an exclusive essay from Saunders concerning the genesis of his new work, which has been praised as possessing "an absurdist wit as playful as Monty Python's and a vision as dark as Samuel Beckett's."

Read George Saunders's Essay, "Why I Wrote Phil"

More from George Saunders

Pastoralia

CivilWarLand in Bad Decline

The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip

From the Inside Flap:

"Saunders's prose is like a drug candy, compulsively swallowed, sweetly addictive... Anarchic and startling."
--San Francisco Bay Guardian

"George Saunders is a writer of arresting brilliance and originality." -Tobias Wolff

"Screamingly funny." -Time

"Artful and sophisticated...truly unusual. Imagine Lewis's Babbitt thrown into the backseat of a car going cross-country, driven by R. Crumb, Matt Groening, Lynda Barry, Harvey Pekar or Spike Jonze. That'd be a story Saunders could tell." -The New York Times

"The bold successor to Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut." -Nylon

"A searing satirist with a peculiar sensibility that allows him to wreak havok on a cheesy American landscape that is often uproariously implausible yet sickeningly familiar."
-The Boston Globe

"A brilliant distortionist who devises dark, hallucinatory arenas and sets fierce satires against countercurrents of grotesque sentimentality." -The Village Voice

"Saunders is a provocateur, a moralist, a zealot, a lefty, and a funny, funny writer."
-Esquire

"George Saunders is one of the most intriguing writers alive. His work is socially complex, critically engaging to both the academic and the casual reader, and has inspired a cult status not unlike that of Pynchon and Vonnegut." -Bookninja.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Riverhead Books
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1594481520
• ISBN 13: 9781594481529
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 134