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.
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, 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.
Industry Reviews
‘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
'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
