Vigil

《Vigil》是紐約時報暢銷第一、布克獎得主 George Saunders 的全新小說，故事聚焦石油公司執行長生命最後時刻的床邊，充滿電光火石般的衝擊與深刻洞察。

來自《林肯在中陰》作者的震撼新作！一位石油帝國大亨躺在病床上，面對死亡、遺憾與家族糾葛，他的意識在回憶與幻覺中遊走，揭露權力、金錢背後的孤獨與人性掙扎。Saunders 以招牌黑色幽默與細膩心理剖析，打造一場床邊的「守夜」儀式，讓讀者在笑中淚中反思人生。這是 2026 年最值得擁有的文學大作！

“After his spectacular Lincoln in the Bardo, Saunders returns . . . with a new novel even more spectacular than the last.”—Los Angeles Times

A “daring” (Time) novel from the #1 New York Times bestselling, Booker Prize–winning author of A Swim in a Pond in the Rain and Tenth of December, taking place at the bedside of an oil company CEO in the twilight hours of his life as he is ferried from this world into the next

“Vibrant, fiendishly clever . . . Vigil is pure Saunders: the death of empathy, he insists, is greatly exaggerated.”—The Boston Globe

Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.

She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?

Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.

With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.