Book description
'Saunders is an astoundingly tuned voice - graceful, dark, authentic and funny - telling just the kind of stories we need to get us through these times' Thomas Pynchon
In PASTORALIA elements of contemporary life are twisted, merged and amplified into a slightly skewed version of modern America. A couple…
Why read it?
1 author picked Pastoralia as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Specifically, I'm recommending the short story "Sea Oak." In the expanse of horror fiction, it has to be said that there are very few stories about a kindly old woman who returns from the dead as a pissed-off, vulgar, rotting corpse demanding her nephew start showing his cock (Saunders’s phrasing, not mine) for extra money so that his family can stop being pushovers and start earning some cash. George Saunders, it should be noted, is not remotely a horror author—rather, one of the more offbeat, distinctive writers of short literary fiction of the last quarter century—and Pastoralia is determinedly not…
From Harrison's list on The best short horror stories for understanding why my brain works this way.
If you love Pastoralia...
Almost Home
Almost Home is a fictional retelling of the last great tragedy of the Civil War.
In late April 1865, almost 2,000 newly freed Union prisoners of war are packed onto the steamer Sultana, in poor repair and with a listed capacity of 376 passengers. Among them are four Indiana soldiers…
Want books like Pastoralia?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Pastoralia.
Share your top 3 reads of 2026!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
181
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like Pastoralia, you might also like...
Resonant Blue and Other Stories
The first collection of award-winning short fiction from the author of Bellflower and Things to See in Arizona, whose writing reflects “how we can endure and overcome our personal histories, better understand our ancestral ones, and accept the unknown future ahead.”
In “Driftwood,” a woman in a sleepy desert…
Let Them Tell You
Nancy Lord, one of Alaska’s best-known writers, has been writing fiction and nonfiction in Alaska for more than fifty years. Let Them Tell You gathers selected stories from her three previous short fiction books, each first published in a different decade, alongside newer work, some published in journals and some…
