Witness: Stories (Hardcover)

Regular price £22.00

by Jamel Brinkley

Description

What does it mean to really see the world around you―to bear witness? And what does it cost us, both to see and not to see?

In these ten stories, each set in the changing landscapes of contemporary New York City, a range of characters―from children to grandmothers to ghosts―live through the responsibility of perceiving and the moral challenge of speaking up or taking action. Though they strive to connect with, stand up for, care for, and remember one another, they often fall short, and the structures they build around these ambitions and failures shape their futures as well as the legacies and prospects of their communities and their city.

In its portraits of families and friendships lost and found, the paradox of intimacy, the long shadow of grief, and the meaning of home, 
Witness enacts its own testimony. Here is a world where fortunes can be made and stolen in just a few generations, where strangers might sometimes show kindness while those we trust―doctors, employers, siblings―too often turn away, where joy comes in snatches: flowers on a windowsill, dancing in the street, glimpsing your purpose, change on the horizon.

With prose as upendingly beautiful as it is artfully, seamlessly crafted, Jamel Brinkley offers nothing less than the full scope of life and death and change in the great, unending drama of the city.

About the Author

Jamel Brinkley is the author of A Lucky Man, which won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and was a finalist for the National Book Award, the John Leonard Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. His work has appeared in The Paris ReviewA Public SpacePloughshares, and The Best American Short Stories. He was raised in the Bronx and Brooklyn and currently teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Product Details

Category: Fiction

Language: English

Format/Binding: Hardcover

Book Condition: New

ISBN-10: 0374607036

ISBN-13: 978-0374607036

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Date Published: August 1, 2023

Pages: 240

Terms of Sale

All book sales are final. No returns or exchanges.

Purchaser will receive a new book that has never been read.

The book will be shipped within 7 business days of receipt of order via a major mail carrier (USPS, UPS, FedEX, or DHL) and may take up to 14 days to arrive depending on the carrier and destination.

International shipping is also available.