Witness

Jamel Brinkley's 'Witness' is a collection of stories set in contemporary New York City, exploring themes of connection, witness, and the cost of taking action. The stories feature a diverse range of characters, from children to grandmothers, and delve into the complexities of their relationships and the city's vibrant landscape. Brinkley's prose is praised for its beauty and artistry, offering a profound insight into the human experience.

Format: Hardback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 03 August 2023
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Brinkleys sentences are daggers, Raven Leilani, author of Luster, writes. Extraordinary, moving, compelling, and virtuosic, Observer. A triumph, Colin Barrett, author of Homesickness. An electric collection of stories set in contemporary New York, from the award-winning author of A Lucky Man and National Book Award finalist, Jamel Brinkley. What does it mean to take action? To bear witness? What does it cost? These stories take us into the heart of contemporary New York City and its residents' lives. We meet children, grandmothers, and even ghosts as they strive to connect, to stand up for, and to really see each other. Their relationships shape not only their own futures but those of their families and their city. In its portraits of families and friendships, Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in a generation, where strangers sometimes show kindness while those we trust—doctors, employers, siblings—too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches. With prose as upendingly beautiful as it is artfully crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city.

Exhilarating and impactful, New York Times. Each story is a gift. Yiyun Li, author of The Book of Goose. A dazzling collection by a masterful storyteller. Jamel Brinkley is brilliant, the real thing, a revelation. Justin Torres, author of We the Animals. Read everything this man writes, and regard the world anew. Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You. These are stories of rare beauty and insight, that glitter with humor and hurt, written with lambent clarity and tenderness. David Hayden, author of Darker With the Lights On. There is all the involvedness and complexity of a novel.

Weight: 354g
Dimension: 143 x 224 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780008538637