Description
Longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction
I can’t make heads or tails of it, the goat on the corner of Union and Metropolitan.
It is 2016. Ezra is a queer, Jewish person carrying out their last act of protest outside Trump Tower, New York.
While they experience their final moments, their life flashes across time and geography, leaping from memories of childhood to the inherited memory and historical movements of their family: smoking Winstons aged twelve, after Hebrew School; their mother disappearing without a trace; a college reunion filled with ghosts.
Visceral, propulsive and at turns fluorescently beautiful and tragic, Yr Dead is a diasporic bildungsroman that explores the things that make us human and alive with clear-eyed sincerity.
‘A rich, densely woven patchwork of a life that is at times bleak, at others funny, yearning, and – ultimately, surprisingly, given the context – hopeful.’ Marie Claire
‘Tender and subtle . . . a novel that could so easily lean into the horror of its central act but instead settles on something more delicate.’ Daily Telegraph
‘[An] ambitious, unflinching tale.’ Observer
‘With Yr Dead, Sax revivifies the novel form, sculpting a poignant narrative that accumulates in meaning and sticks in the mind long after reading . . . Refreshing as it is revelatory.’ Peter Scalpello
‘Lyrical, dizzying . . . Sax skilfully captures the effect of a culture in crisis.’ Skinny
‘A singular, titrated, indelible debut.’ Alexander Chee
‘I’ve long been dazzled by Sam Sax’s writing . . . Yr Dead is a kaleidoscopic wonder.’ R. O. Kwon
‘A stunning, dizzying, fun-house mirror of a novel. There is anger here, and grief, but most of all tenderness . . . I often held my breath reading.’ Jenny Mustard
‘It surprised me – startling me into a laugh, into knowledge, into a deep and enduring ache. I love this book.’ Safia Elhillo
‘It’s not just that I trust Sam Sax’s imagination. My sincere belief is that Sam’s creative freedom unlocks the potential for our liberation.’ Saeed Jones
‘Sax skillfully captures the effect of a culture in crisis.’ Skinny
‘A miracle of a book, a brutal, bittersweet, beautiful study in transmuting history into what you do, instead of what has been done to you . . . I love this book with every fiber of my being.’ Rumpus
‘Sax has produced a work that is meditative, deeply humane, and profoundly original.’ Starred review, Kirkus
