The book is an impressive and experimental ghost story set in 1862. It explores the death of Willie Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's 11-year-old son, who died of fever during the second year of the Civil War. Saunders, a Tibetan Buddhist, imagines Willie's experiences in the "bardo", a Buddhist state between the worlds of the living and the dead where Willie communicates with other dead souls, and where he watches his father visit his entombed body.

　　Writing in The Guardian earlier this year, Saunders described the process of creating the novel:"There is something wonderful in watching a figure appear from the stone, feeling the presence of something within you...and also beyond you-something consistent, willful, kind and generous, that seems to have a plan, which seems to be:to lead you to your own higher ground."

Saunders was the bookmakers' favorite to win the award, but the victory by an American writer immediately after Paul Beatty won the prize for his novel The Sellout is controversial. Before 2014, the Man Booker was qualified only to writers from the Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland. The decision to allow American writers to enter has disappointed authors including A.S. Byatt and Julian Barnes, who argue that the award's main purpose is giving exposure to writers who are little-known in the broader American literary market. "The Americans have got enough prizes of their own," Barnes told The Radio Times last year. Ron Charles, the book critic for The Washington Post, has also argued against the inclusion of Americans. "For any serious reader of fiction in this country," Charles wrote in September, "the Americanization of the Booker Prize is a lost opportunity to learn about great books that haven't already been publicly announced."