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If I Survive You

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What to expect

In the 1970s, Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But America, as the couple and their two children learn, is far from the promised land. Excluded from society as Black immigrants, the family pushes on first through Hurricane Andrew and later the 2008 recession, living in a house so cursed that the pet fish launches itself out of its own tank rather than stay. But even as things fall apart, the family remains motivated, often to its own detriment, by what their younger son, Trelawny, calls "the exquisite, racking compulsion to survive."

Masterfully constructed with heart and humor, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery's If I Survive You center on Trelawny as he struggles to carve out a place for himself amid financial disaster, racism, and flat-out bad luck. After a fight with Topper--himself reckoning with his failures as a parent and his longing for Jamaica--Trelawny claws his way out of homelessness through a series of odd, often hilarious jobs. Meanwhile, his brother, Delano, attempts a disastrous cash grab to get his kids back, and his cousin Cukie searches for a father who doesn't want to be found. As each character searches for a foothold, they never forget the profound danger of climbing without a safety net.

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Escoffery's debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and white supremacy. With If I Survive You, Escoffery announces himself as a prodigious storyteller in a class of his own, a chronicler of American life at its most gruesome and hopeful.

Critics Review

  • ‘An astonishing, compassionate entrance to the literary scene‘ i Newspaper

    ‘All of life is here in unflinching detail: the fragility of existence, the American dream and the road not taken’ The Booker Prize Judges

    ‘A commanding debut from a talent to watch’ Observer

    ‘Brilliantly energetic… his talent feels fully formed and raring to go’ Financial Times

    ‘Unmissable… rare in that it has the heft and heart of a novel, with the refined finesse of the short story… The only thing to do is eagerly press it into the hands of others’ Irish Times

    ‘Jaunty, irrepressible and full of energy… A fine achievement’ Suzy Feay, Financial Times Weekend

    ‘Sings with authenticity and heart’ AnOther

    ‘Surges with the symphonic, imaginative, propulsive energy of Gabriel García Márquez’ Guardian

    ‘Ravishing… thrillingly free’ New Yorker

    ‘Fiction written at the highest level… There are no limits to where he will go’ Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House

    ‘Superb… a beautiful economy in the telling that never sacrifices the depth, complexity and richness of the worlds these characters inhabit’ Percival Everett, author of Erasure

    ‘This I adore… Sumptuous and astute, excellent on the humiliations of familial and societal experience’ Diana Evans, author of Ordinary People

    ‘Tender; vicious; very funny. An impassioned, singular book’ Ross Raisin, author of A Natural

    ‘An elegant meditation on belonging from a powerful new writer’ Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby

    ‘A dazzling mirror held up to our identity-obsessed time’ Joyce Carol Oates, author of Blonde

    ‘A gifted, sure-footed storyteller’ New York Times

    ‘Like nothing you’ve read before’ Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

    ‘A welcome reminder of what fiction can do’ Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

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