Author(s): Jonathan Escoffery

Contemporary Fiction

'Brilliant wit, real heart and electric humour' Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

'A compelling hurricane of a book' Ann Patchett

'A welcome reminder of what fiction can do’ Rumaan Alam

A major debut, blazing with style and heart, that follows a Jamaican family in Miami navigating recession, racism, generational divide, 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. In the 1970s, 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?’ His brother, Delano, is easier in his own skin but is forced to take increasingly desperate measures to secure a future for his children. 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.