Jonathan Escoffery’s novel If I Survive You is on the shortlist for the Booker Prize 2023 announced on Thursday, September 21, 2023.
The Booker Prize for Fiction is a literary prize awarded each year for the best original novel written in the English language and published in the United Kingdom since 1969. Some of the previous winners of African descent have been Marlon James, Nadine Gordimer, J. M. Coetzee, Ben Okri, Bernadine Evaristo, and Damon Galgut.
The jury for this year is chaired by novelist Esi Edugyan alongside Mary Jean Chan, poet, lecturer, editor, and critic; James Shapiro, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and author specialising in Shakespeare; and actor and writer Robert Webb. The longlist for the award was announced on August 1 before the shortlist featuring If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery was revealed on Thursday evening.
On Jonathan Escoffery’s If I Survive You they said, “In Jonathan Escoffery’s vital, captivating debut novel, each chapter takes us deeper into a family album of stories, revealing the life and survival of a family, fleeing the violence of early Seventies’ Jamaica for the uncertain sanctuary of a new beginning in America.”
Jonathan Escoffery tweeted, “Blessed 🙏🏽 thank you @TheBookerPrizes & judges.”
The winner of the £50,000 prize will be announced in London, UK on November 26, 2023.
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