Spectrality and Narrative Form in George Saunders’s Lincoln in the Bardo

This chapter explores the play of presence and absence in George Saunders’s 2017 novel Lincoln in the Bardo. Taking a cue from Jacques Derrida and his concept of hauntology, it follows the novel’s movement between different forms, genres and religions to delineate the spectral space where absence collapses into presence, where the voices of spectral forms haunt the narration, and where a father mourning the loss of his son finds him again as a present absence. As it operates in the interstices between here and there, Lincoln in the Bardo is shown to be, ultimately, a moving testament to the persistence of the soul, making the inaudible audible, the invisible visible and the unfathomable felt in traces and echoes.