Pastoralia

By: George Saunders

Narrated by: George Saunders

A stunning collection including the story "Sea Oak," 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.

Hailed by Thomas Pynchon as "graceful, dark, authentic, and funny," George Saunders gives us, in his inventive and beloved voice, this bestselling collection of stories set against a warped, hilarious, and terrifyingly recognizable American landscape.

Includes an Original Song by the Author
“Pastoralia” was written and performed by George Saunders, and recorded, mixed, and mastered by Peter Coleman at Indigital Studios in Santa Cruz, California.

Critic reviews

"Artful and sophisicated... 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." —New York Times

"Saunders is a provocateur, a moralist, a zealot, a lefty, and a funny, funny writer, and the stories in Pastoralia delight. We're very luck to have them." —Esquire

“Intoxicating.” —Time Out

“Exuberantly weird . . . brutally funny” —New York Times

“Compulsively swallowed, sweetly addictive” —San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Demands to be reread immediately” —The Wall Street Journal

“Hilarious and heartrending” —The Village Voice

“Breathtaking . . . a masterpiece” —San Diego Union Tribune

“Riveting” —U.S. News and World Report

“Screamingly funny” —Time

“Saunders is a provocateur, a moralist, a zealot, a lefty, and a funny, funny writer, and the stories in Pastoralia delight. We’re very lucky to have them.” —Esquire

“Breathtaking, brutally hilarious satire, a savage skewering not only of the American workplace, but of the American character itself. . . . Pastoralia is a masterpiece of unsettling comedy.” —San Diego Union Tribune

“Artful and sophisticated. . . .truly unusual. Imagine Lewis’s Babbitt thrown into the back seat 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.”—New York Times

“The short-story collection of the year . . . Pastoralia does everything a gathering of tales is supposed to do: It touches the reader but also provokes reflection, mirth, and pain.” —Kansas City Star

“Dazzling . . . Saunders’s misfits confront their degradations with heroic optimism; rarely have the comic nuances of suffering been tracked with such precision. These stories, injected with Saunders’s highly original blend of irony and tenderness, ride you down spirals of the absurd and fling you back to your own life, startled.” —Men’s Journal

“A master of distilling the disorders of our time into fiction.” —Salon

“Fiercely funny . . . [Saunders is] a master of the self-flagellating interior monologue.” —The Boston Globe

Saunders es un genio

No sólo porque el autor lee sus cuentos, y lo hace de la manera más inmersiva posible, sino que también graba la música que aparece engrelas historias. Una verdadera joya.

Early work from a gifted writer of short stories

I enjoyed these witty and weird stories about people whose stories are rarely told. Saunders is a good reader too!

So talented

George Saunders, writer, voice talent and musician. Its hard to imagine that reading these stories myself would have been nearly as entertaining. Great book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

He’s brilliant. The narrative perspective is fantastic.

I love the brutally honest and flawed and real and crazy narrative inner stream of consciousness.

Greatest living short story author reads own work.

Saunders is a national treasure. His readings of his own work are funny, touching, edgy. Treat yourself to this marvelous book. It’s short but you will listen to it many times.