Yr Dead — Sam Sax

 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.

‘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

‘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

‘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