Abstract: This article is dedicated to the question of modern menippea, and analysis of the novel by the American writer George Saunders in the context of the indicated genre tradition. The object of this research is the moral-didactical intentions of modern menippean satire. The subject is the combination of ideological and artistic characteristics that allow speaking of menippea of the XXI century. The study is based on the G. Saunders’ novel “Lincoln in Bardo” that is the winner of the Man Booker Prize 2017. The goal consists in the unity of two analytical movements. Firstly, menippea is interpreted as a genre, which blends in the apophatic and cataphatic platforms of poetics, combines sacral and secular contexts, and creates cathartic effects in the grotesque speech on death and ways of its overcoming. Secondly, the author’s strategy and actual didactic material of the novel “Lincoln in Bardo” is subject to analysis. The key research method becomes the analysis of literary text that allows revealing manippean characteristics of Saunders’ novel “Lincoln in Bardo” and expressing substantiated comments on the didactic potential of the modern American novel that blends in the “word on Lincoln” and the “grotesque death”. The conclusion is made on the system of didactic gestures of the novel “Lincoln in Bardo”. These are the anti-totalitarian gestures against political Trumpism and classical theology; the gesture for boundless rhetorical freedom enabling the use of offensive language; gesture of liberation from fear of death through philosophical statement on its hollowness; and emotional gesture for tolerance of diversified ethical actions (“depth of Lincoln” and “emptiness of the dead”).