Memorial // A Novel

Benson and Mike are two young guys who live together in Houston. Mike is a Japanese American chef at a Mexican restaurant and Benson’s a Black day care teacher, and they’ve been together for a few years good years but now they’re not sure why they’re still a couple. There’s the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other.

But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives in Texas for a visit, Mike picks up and flies across the world to say goodbye. In Japan he undergoes an extraordinary transformation, discovering the truth about his family and his past. Back home, Mitsuko and Benson are stuck living together as unconventional roommates, an absurd domestic situation that ends up meaning more to each of them than they ever could have predicted. Without Mike’s immediate pull, Benson begins to push outwards, realizing he might just know what he wants out of life and have the goods to get it.

Both men will change in ways that will either make them stronger together, or fracture everything they’ve ever known. And just maybe they’ll all be okay in the end.

“This book, in what feels like a new vision for the 21st century novel, made me happy.” Ocean Vuong, author ofOn Earth Were Briefly Gorgeous

Bryan Washingtonis a National Book Award 5 Under 35 honoree, and winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His first book, the story collectionLot, was a finalist for the NBCCs John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award.Lotwas aNew York TimesNotable Book, one of Dwight Garners top ten books of the year, and on best-of-the-year lists fromTime, NPR,Vanity Fair,BuzzFeed, and many more. He has written forThe New Yorker,The New York Times,The New York Times Magazine,BuzzFeed,Vulture,The Paris Review,McSweeneys Quarterly,Tin House,One Story,Bon Apptit,GQ,The Awl, andCatapult. He lives in Houston.

• Item Weight:1.1 pounds
• Hardcover:320 pages
• ISBN-10:0593087275
• ISBN-13:9780593087275
• Product Dimensions:6.2 x 1.03 x 9.25 inches
• Publisher:Riverhead Books (October 27, 2020)