Victim: A Novel by Andrew Boryga (Hardcover)

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Fiction – Literary – Satire – Dark Humor\nRELEASE DATE: 3\/12\/2024 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER’S WAREHOUSE)\nYou will burn through Victim and find your hands scalded when you are donePitch perfect. Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming\nTheres a fine line between bending the truth and telling bold-faced lies, and Javier Perez is willing to cross it. Victim is a fearless satire about a hustler from the Bronx who sees through the veneer of diversity initiatives and decides to cash in on the odd currency of identity.\nJavier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his backgroundmurdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activitycan be a key to doors he didnt even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.\nAs a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until theres not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesnt seem to care about Javis newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after Javi graduates, a viral essay transforms him from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his unique perspective. But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once Gios released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javis charade, or will it all come crumbling down?\nA sendup of virtue signaling and tear-jerking trauma plots written with the bite of Paul Beatty, Victim asks what real diversity looks like and how far one man is willing to go to make his story hit the right notes.\nAUTHOR BIO:\nANDREW BORYGA grew up in the Bronx and now lives in Miami with his family. His writing has appeared inThe New York Times, The New Yorker,andThe Atlantic,and been awarded prizes by Cornell University, The University of Miami, The Susquehanna Review, and The Michener Foundation. He attended the Tin House Writer’s Workshop and has taught writing to college students, elementary school students, and incarcerated adults.Victimis his debut novel.\n\”In the vein of satires such as Percival Everett’s gloriousErasure, Paul Beatty’sThe Sellout, and Mithu Sanyal’sIdentitti. . . Superbly written, this is a darkly funny, searing expos of the contemporary appetite for trauma narratives and the ill-informed responses of many institutions to issues of racial justice.\”–Booklist\”Part blistering satire, part earnest bildungsroman [in this] canny debut. . . Boryga plays his dynamic central duo against each other to striking effect. This foray into the uses and misuses of victimhood bears fruit.\”–Publishers Weekly\n\”Victims going to hurt some people’s feelings. But that’s exactly what smart, insightful social satire is meant to do. Andrew Boryga’s dazzling debut novel is the story of a hustler whose game is to benefit from the struggles of other people. He’s an identity politics confidence man. And yet he’s also someone you come to care about, and worry for, as the stakes of his hustle grow and grow. This is a fearless and ambitious debut.\”–Victor LaValle, author of Lone Women\n\”Andrew Boryga dismantles with audacious precision the lies upholding certain lives and the lethal undertow of truth. Blazing with insight,Victimis part social commentary and part requiem for the values of our time. This is a simply stellar debut.\”–Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country