Who is 2017 Man Booker Prize winner George Saunders?

Last night, American author George Saunders took home the 2017 Man Booker Prize for his first novel, Lincoln in the Bardo.

Bookie’s favourite Saunders fought of stiff competition from five other authors - including How to be Both author Ali Smith - to pick up the high-profile fiction award.

Saunders now joins the likes of celebrated writers like Margaret Atwood, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Salman Rushdie as a winner of the hotly-contested literary accolade - meaning you’ll probably start to see his book in the hands of commuters across the London Underground in the coming weeks.

Before you rush out to pick up your copy, here’s everything you need to know about the writer of the moment.

Who is George Saunders?

US writer Saunders was born in Amarillo,Texas, but grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago.

The 58-year-old is best known for his short-stories and essays, which often focus on consumerism, corporate culture and the role of mass media.

Saunders was not always a writer: he trained in geophysical engineering in his 20s, earning a S.S. in geophysical engineering from Colorado School of Mines.

Of his scientific background, Saunders has said, "any claim I might make to originality in my fiction is really just the result of this odd background: basically, just me working inefficiently, with flawed tools, in a mode I don't have sufficient background to really understand. Like if you put a welder to designing dresses."

In 1986, after finding a copy of People Magazine and reading a profile on Jay McInerny and Raymond Carver, Saunders was encouraged to apply for an MA in creative writing at Syracuse University.

From 1989 to 1996, he worked as a technical writer and geophysical engineer for an environmental engineering firm, but published short stories in his spare time.

Saunders got his break when he won the National Magazine Award for fiction in 1994 for his short story The 400-Pound CEO, and then again in 1996, 2000 and 2004.

He also won both the MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships in 2006, The Story Prize in 2013 and the Folio Prize in 2014.

The New Yorker named Saunders one of the best American writers under the age of 40 in 1999.

He currently lectures at Syracuse University and lives in the Catskills.

So he’s the second American to win a Man Booker prize?

Yes, last year’s winner Paul Beatty was the first US writer to chalk up a victory in Man Booker’s 48-year history with his novel The Sellout (buy it here) - making Saunders the second.

That’s not to say America has been short of brilliant writers over the past half a century: until 2014, the prize was restricted to authors from the Commonwealth and the Republic of Ireland, but the fiction award was opened up to writers of any nationality writing in English.

What is Lincoln in the Bardo about?

The book tells the story of Abraham Lincoln’s grief after the death of his young son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War

Shattered by grief, Lincoln arrives at Georgetown cemetery under the cover of darkness, to visit the marble crypt where his son’s body has been laid to rest.

Unfolding over a single night, the novel is set in the bardo - an intermediate space between life and death in the school of Buddhism.

The novel was inspired by a story Saunders's wife's cousin told him about how Lincoln visited his son Willie's crypt on several occasions to hold the body.

“Many years ago, during a visit to Washington DC, my wife’s cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that the grief-stricken Lincoln had, according to the newspapers of the day, entered the crypt “on several occasions” to hold the boy’s body,” he said.

“An image spontaneously leapt into my mind – a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pietà.”

“I carried that image around for the next 20-odd years, too scared to try something that seemed so profound,."

"Finally, in 2012, noticing that I wasn’t getting any younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read ‘Afraid to Embark on Scary Artistic Project He Desperately Longed to Attempt’, decided to take a run at it, in exploratory fashion, no commitments.”

Man Booker judges praised the novel, hailing it an “utterly original” work and said it was “deeply moving”.

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (Random House); buy it here.