If I Survive You

(Paperback)

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SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 BOOKER PRIZE

Dazzling GUARDIAN

Blistering THE TIMES

'A delight' DIANA EVANS

Fiction written at the highest level ANN PATCHETT

'Hilarious, revelatory' MARLON JAMES
An electrifying, hilarious and deeply moving tragicomic debut novel following a Jamaican family grappling with a new life in the US.

What are you

This is the puzzled question that greets a young Trelawny growing up in a Miami where his racial ambiguity is regarded with confusion and suspicion. Its not just his neighbours, his Jamaican parents Topper and Sanya dont seem to understand him either. Then theres his stubborn older brother Delano, who is determined to secure a better future for his own children, no matter what it takes.

As both brothers navigate the challenges littered in their path a woefully unreliable father, racism, recession and even a hurricane they find themselves increasingly at odds. Will they make it through together or must one brothers future come at the cost of the other

An astonishingly assured debut novel clarity, variety and fizzing prose BOOKER PRIZE JUDGES

So damn funny RUMAAN ALAM

Astonishing I NEWSPAPER

'Utterly unstoppable IRISH TIMES

What readers say:

So good it was hard to put down

Humour, real feeling totally recommend

So engrossing and entertaining

A must read

Reviews

Blistering Escoffery writes stinging sentences The Times

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

Thrilling With much tenderness in the gulf between father and son Observer

So brilliant it stopped me in my tracks Astonishing iNews

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 Irish Times

Surges with the symphonic, imaginative, propulsive energy of Gabriel Garca Mrquez Guardian

A compelling hurricane of a book Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House

Superb a much-needed new voice Percival Everett, author of Erasure

'This I adore Sumptuous and astute' Diana Evans, author of Ordinary People

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

So damn funny Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

Author Bio

Jonathan Escoffery is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, AGNI, Passages North, Zyzzyva, and Electric Literature, and has been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing. He received his MFA from the University of Minnesota, is a PhD fellow in the University of Southern California's PhD in Creative Writing and Literature Program, and in 2021 was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in the Creative Writing Program at Stanford University.