If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery

2023 Booker Prize Longlist 

A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family striving for more in Miami, and introduces a generational storyteller. In the 1970s, Topper & Sanya flee to Miami as political violence consumes their native Kingston. 
"Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory and like nothing you've read before."  — Marlon James 

Masterfully constructed with heart and humour, the linked stories in Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You centre 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, & his cousin, Cukie, looks 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.

"Remarkable... Language shines throughout the collection .. Escoffery masterfully transliterates the dialect... Only their mother, Sanya, [is] without a dedicated story in the collection. Based on the immense talent on display in this debut, here's hoping that Escoffery's sophomore effort is a whole novel about her." — Cory Oldweiler, Star Tribune

Pulsing with vibrant lyricism and inimitable style, sly commentary and contagious laughter, Jonathan Escoffery’s debut unravels what it means to be in between homes and cultures in a world at the mercy of capitalism and whiteness. 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.