© 2026
Donate
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
The Book Show
The Book Show

George Saunders - Vigil

By Joe Donahue
Published January 27, 2026 at 2:00 PM EST
Book cover for "Vigil" by George Saunders
Random House

George Saunders is one of the most original voices in American fiction. His new novel, “Vigil,” follows Jill “Doll” Blaine, an afterlife usher summoned to guide an unrepentant oil tycoon toward death. Over one wild night, Saunders confronts power, greed, climate reckoning, and mercy itself.

Tags
The Book Show george saundersthe book showbook showafterlife
Joe Donahue
Joe talks to people on the radio for a living. In addition to countless impressive human "gets" - he has talked to a lot of Muppets. Joe grew up in Philadelphia, has been on the area airwaves for more than 25 years and currently lives in Washington County, NY with his wife, Kelly, and their dog, Brady. And yes, he reads every single book.
See stories by Joe Donahue
Related Content
  • Book cover for "The First Time I Saw Him" by Laura Dave
    The Book Show
    Laura Dave - The First Time I Saw Him
    Joe Donahue
    Laura Dave continues Hannah Hall’s journey in the sequel to her best-seller “The Last Thing He Told Me.” The latest, “The First Time I Saw Him,” explores not what someone else has hidden – but what the narrator herself may have misunderstood about the story she’s been telling herself for years.
  • Book cover for "Buckeye" by Patrick Ryan
    The Book Show
    Patrick Ryan - Buckeye
    Joe Donahue
    In his newest novel, "Buckeye," Patrick Ryan explores the ways families hold together even as the past threatens to pull them apart. Moving between generations, Ryan explores how we inherit not just our parents’ habits and hopes, but their unfinished business.
  • The Book Show
    Karen Russell - The Antidote
    Joe Donahue
    Karen Russell's latest, “The Antidote,” is a dust bowl novel and a reckoning with a nation’s forgetting that enacts the settler amnesia and omissions passed down from generation to generation.
  • Book cover for "Mark Twain" by Ron Chernow
    The Book Show
    Ron Chernow - Mark Twain
    Joe Donahue
    In his latest biography, “Mark Twain,” Ron Chernow brings to life the man known as the father of American literature, Mark Twain. Chernow peels back the layers of this complex figure, showing us the man behind classics like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “The Innocents Abroad.”