My edition has a sticker that it won the Man Booker Prize, and is among the best books of the 21st century according to the New York Times, and the claim that it was a #1 NYT best seller. And a quote from Golson Whitehead. And the horizon isn't just lighter, there's an orangish yellow. George Saunders is 67 year old, 9 years after publishing this book, which seems to be his only book that is not short stories. He was born in Amarillo Texas, and grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, Oak Forest. He got an MFA at Syracuse 1988, where he's a professor since 1997. In 1981, he received a B.S. in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. "I really love Russian writers, especially from the 19th and early 20th Century: Gogol, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel. I love the way they take on the big topics. I'm also inspired by a certain absurdist comic tradition that would include influences like Mark Twain, Daniil Kharms, Groucho Marx, Monty Python, Steve ...