Bryan Washington - Palaver

It's our great pleasure to be welcoming Bryan Washington to the bookshop for an event to celebrate the publication of his latest novel, Palaver. This is a life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love from the award-winning author of story collection Lot and the novels Memorial and Family Meal.

This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.

In-person vouchers can be redeemed on the night of the event against a single copy of Palaver – we will have a list of attendees with vouchers to be redeemed. Please note that only one voucher can be redeemed per book. Livestream vouchers are valid until the day after the event and can be redeemed on our website against a single copy of Palaver.

About Palaver:

In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor, drinking his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He’s entangled with a married man, too. But while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his family in America, particularly his mother, whose preference for the son’s troubled homophobic brother pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they’ve last seen each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep.

Separated only by the son’s cat, the two of them clash. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to atone for her missteps. The son initially struggles to forgive, but as they share meals, conversations and an eventful trip to one of the oldest cities in Japan, both mother and son start to reckon with the meaning of ‘home’ – and whether, perhaps, they can find it in each other.