Palaver

A Novel

De: Bryan Washington

Narrado por: André Santana

Long-listed for the National Book Award for Fiction

Named a Most Anticipated Book by New York, Time, the Boston Globe, Bustle, and Town & Country

A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington.

In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor and drinks his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He’s entangled in a sexual relationship with a married man, and while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his mother in Houston, whose preference for the son’s oft-troubled homophobic brother, Chris, pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they last saw each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep.

With only the son’s cat, Taro, to mediate, the two of them bristle at each other immediately. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to reconcile her good intentions with her missteps. The son struggles to forgive. But as life steers them in unexpected directions—the mother to a tentative friendship with a local bistro owner and the son to a cautious acquaintance with a new patron of the bar—they begin to see each other more clearly. During meals and conversations and an eventful trip to Nara, mother and son try as best they can to determine where “home” really is—and whether they can even find it in one another.

With understated humor and an open heart, moving through past and present and across Houston, Jamaica, and Japan, Bryan Washington’s Palaver is an intricate story of family, love, and the beauty of a life among others.

"André Santana gives a standout performance in this layered novel about grief and family."—AudioFile on Family Meal

"André Santana gives a remarkable performance..."—Library Journal on Family Meal

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

©2025 Bryan Washington (P)2025 Macmillan Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Rendered in a taut, affecting prose, Washington’s third novel portrays a queer Black man’s attempts to reconcile emotions surrounding his estranged mother and conflicted relationships from Jamaica to Texas to Japan.”—Hamilton Cain, The Boston Globe (Best New Fall Books)

“Tender and endearing . . . Count on Washington for stylish tales with emotional depth and, always, delicious-sounding food.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“It’s remarkable how delicately and finely Washington metes out the emotional journeys for both mother and son . . . He’s skillful at conveying the ways in which small, even tiny acts of kindness can heal . . . A patient, powerful analysis of the dual devotion required to heal a fractured relationship.”—Kirkus Reviews