If I Survive You

By: Jonathan Escoffery

Narrated by: Torian Brackett

Length: 8 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE

A major debut that follows a Jamaican family in Miami navigating recession, racism and Hurricane Andrew.

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, 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 increasingly pitted against one another. Will their rivalry be the thing that finally tears their family apart?

If I Survive You pulses with inimitable style, heart and barbed humour while unravelling what it means to carve out an existence between cultures, homes and pay checks. It announces Jonathan Escoffery as a chronicler of life at its most gruesome and hopeful.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION

A most anticipated Book of 2023 in AnOther Magazine, Huffington Post UK and i Newspaper

©2023 Jonathan Escoffery (P)2023 HarperCollins Publishers Limited

Critic reviews

"Kaleidoscopic, urgent, hilarious, revelatory and like nothing you've read before. These are the stories that we never believed could be told, until Jonathan Escoffery told them." (Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings)

"A collection of connected short stories that reads like a novel, that reads like real life, that reads like fiction written at the highest level. This is a compelling hurricane of a book that sweeps the past, present and future together into one inextricable knot. This is where Jonathan Escoffrey's career begins. There are no limits to where he will go." (Ann Patchett, author of The Dutch House)

"An electrifying, enthralling debut about identity and belonging. Jonathan Escoffery illuminates both beauty and trauma and the ways in which so many of us Jamaicans are still looking for home within ourselves. Told with humor and clear-eyed grace, this spectacular collection introduces us to an amazing new voice." (Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun)