A Guide to George Saunders’ Afterlife (Interview for Image)

An interview with George Saunders on his new novel VIGIL (2026), the contours of his evolving fictive afterlife, & the possibilities of the beyond.

“The idea is, even if no one else in the world knows about it, it would be better for the dying person to get into a healthier relation with the truth. […] And in the worlds of both of my novels, the importance of those last moments is key—people are stuck in these in-between spaces mostly because they died in some deluded or agitated state. Who knows how it is in the real world. But, putting death aside, isn’t it like that in every moment? We lose moment after precious moment to bad ideas and confused emotions and erroneous projections.

[…] I know it’s true that if I think about the moment of my death, it makes the next living moment that much more charged and intense.”

Forthcoming in the summer issue of Image Journal