‘Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory’ Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
'A compelling hurricane of a book' Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family in Miami navigating recession, racism and Hurricane Andrew.
You want a home.
You want to win back your girlfriend’s admiration.
You want to prove that your father bet on the wrong son.
1979. Topper and Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. But they soon learn that the welcome in America will be far from warm.
Trelawny, their youngest son, comes of age in a society which regards him with suspicion and confusion, greeting him with the puzzled question ‘What are you?’
Their eldest son Delano’s longing for a better future for his own children is equalled only by his recklessness in trying to secure it.
As both brothers navigate the obstacles littered in their path – an unreliable father, racism, a financial crisis and Hurricane Andrew – they find themselves pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart?
The thrilling linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You pulse with inimitable style, heart and barbed humour while unravelling what it means to carve out an existence between cultures, homes and pay checks. They announce Escoffery as a once in a generation talent and chronicler of life at its most gruesome and hopeful.
'Escoffery's is a strong, much needed new voice in our literature’ Percival Everett, Booker shortlisted author of The Trees
'A welcome reminder of what fiction can do’ Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
'Brilliant wit, real heart and electric humour' Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black
Review
'A ravishing début … which stomps on the delicate vessel of the trauma plot … Escoffery’s fiction is marked by ingenuity … The book feels thrillingly free' New Yorker
‘A gifted, sure-footed storyteller, with a command of evocative language … a disarming, irreverent sense of humor … makes me eager to read him for a long time to come’ New York Times
‘The buzziest debut of 2022 … In crystalline prose, Escoffery evokes the fluorescent textures of Miami, tapping Caribbean traditions, immigrant aspirations, and familial and communal bonds’ OprahDaily
‘It’s rare for a story collection to break out of the gate with as much buzz as Escoffery’s debut … the author exposes uncomfortable social truths with fine details, wit and dazzling verbal versatility’ Los Angeles Times
‘Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory and like nothing you've read before’ Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings
'Connected short stories that reads like a novel, that reads like real life, that reads like fiction written at the highest level … A compelling hurricane of a book' Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House
‘An electrifying, enthralling debut about identity and belonging … Spectacular’ Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun
‘It’s truly a feat that a book of short stories tackling such big stuff-family, love, violence, race-could be so damn funny … a welcome reminder of what fiction can do’ Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
‘Brilliant wit, real heart and electric humour … a talent not to be ignored’ Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black
‘These are superb stories about identity, family and place. Escoffery's is a strong, much needed new voice in our literature’ Percival Everett author of Erasure
Book Description
From the Back Cover
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.
About the Author
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 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.
+91 9818282497
