2025 National Book Award for Fiction (finalist)
Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction
"A heart-wrenchingly honest, often luminescent exploration of how to find and cultivate true connections, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places . . . [Palaver is] an unshakable triumph.’—The Washington Post
One of TIME's Must-Read Books of 2025 and Kirkus' Best of Fiction 2025
One of The Washington Post's Best Fiction Books of the Year
Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, New York, Time, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, People, Harper's Bazaar,Bustle, and Town & Country
A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington.
In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor and drinks his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He’s entangled in a sexual relationship with a married man, and while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his mother in Houston, whose preference for the son’s oft-troubled homophobic brother, Chris, pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they last saw each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep.
With only the son’s cat, Taro, to mediate, the two of them bristle at each other immediately. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to reconcile her good intentions with her missteps. The son struggles to forgive. But as life steers them in unexpected directions—the mother to a tentative friendship with a local bistro owner and the son to a cautious acquaintance with a new patron of the bar—they begin to see each other more clearly. During meals and conversations and an eventful trip to Nara, mother and son try as best they can to determine where ‘home’ really is—and whether they can even find it in one another.
Written with understated humor and an open heart, moving through past and present and across Houston, Jamaica, and Japan, Bryan Washington’s Palaver is an intricate story of family, love, and the beauty of a life among others.
Genre: Literary Fiction
"A heart-wrenchingly honest, often luminescent exploration of how to find and cultivate true connections, sometimes in the unlikeliest of places . . . [Palaver is] an unshakable triumph.’—The Washington Post
One of TIME's Must-Read Books of 2025 and Kirkus' Best of Fiction 2025
One of The Washington Post's Best Fiction Books of the Year
Named a Most Anticipated Book by the New York Times, New York, Time, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, People, Harper's Bazaar,Bustle, and Town & Country
A life-affirming novel of family, mending, and how we learn to love, from the award-winning Bryan Washington.
In Tokyo, the son works as an English tutor and drinks his nights away with friends at a gay bar. He’s entangled in a sexual relationship with a married man, and while he has built a chosen family in Japan, he is estranged from his mother in Houston, whose preference for the son’s oft-troubled homophobic brother, Chris, pushed him to leave home. Then, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, ten years since they last saw each other, the mother arrives uninvited on his doorstep.
With only the son’s cat, Taro, to mediate, the two of them bristle at each other immediately. The mother, wrestling with memories of her youth in Jamaica and her own complicated brother, works to reconcile her good intentions with her missteps. The son struggles to forgive. But as life steers them in unexpected directions—the mother to a tentative friendship with a local bistro owner and the son to a cautious acquaintance with a new patron of the bar—they begin to see each other more clearly. During meals and conversations and an eventful trip to Nara, mother and son try as best they can to determine where ‘home’ really is—and whether they can even find it in one another.
Written with understated humor and an open heart, moving through past and present and across Houston, Jamaica, and Japan, Bryan Washington’s Palaver is an intricate story of family, love, and the beauty of a life among others.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"The gift of reading Bryan Washington's tender, funny, profoundly compassionate fiction is like sinking finally into a warm bath: a prose that stirs all those sore places that have lingered unspoken in us-and then meets them with Washington's singular, achingly gentle attention, warmth, and solace. Palaver is a quiet knockout of a novel, a book like a yearning hand stretched out to the wide world (even if a car crashes into it!), and most of all a book that knows all family stories (that is, stories about all the possible definitions of family) are also love stories, complete with the heartbreak, loss and betrayal-but also the luminous hope of repair, recovery, and reconciliation." - Elaine Castillo
"Bryan Washington speaks for people who have too long been silenced, and the voice he has found for them is defiant, compassionate, decent and profoundly human." - Damon Galgut
"[Bryan Washington] is a technically dazzling writer." - Alan Hollinghurst
"Palaver is an intimate, ambulatory, and deeply human reflection on family and home-on what we choose and what's already chosen for us. It's about our flawed attempts at loving and being loved, forgiving and being forgiven. It's the rare novel that manages to be funny and sad and honest all at once-awake to the mundane miracles of our lives. Bryan Washington is one of a kind." - Rachel Khong
"Palaver has my heart. The days have felt less heavy while I've gotten to spend time in the novel's capacious world and I can already tell I'll want to reread soon. Bryan Washington is a genius and you want this gorgeous book." - R O Kwon
"Gripping, beautiful, honest, unlike anything else on the bookshelf! A great work by one of America's greatest young writers, Palaver will break and remake your heart. A book I will be sending to everyone I know." - Andrew Sean Greer
"Palaver is the pinnacle of what has become Washington's classic approach to writing: care, humor, tenderness, and an embrace of human beings at their most vulnerable, lovely, and wounded. It's such a joy to see the summation of his generosity of thinking and living actualized in the sentence. Fiction-no-life is better because Washington is writing." - Ocean Vuong
"Few writers write about tenderness as Bryan Washington does-unadorned tenderness that is full of heart and humor but steers clear from familiar sentimentalities and convenient solutions. With deep understanding of human relationships, Palaver is a rare novel that offers companionship to solitary readers and lonely souls." - Yiyun Li
"Bryan Washington speaks for people who have too long been silenced, and the voice he has found for them is defiant, compassionate, decent and profoundly human." - Damon Galgut
"[Bryan Washington] is a technically dazzling writer." - Alan Hollinghurst
"Palaver is an intimate, ambulatory, and deeply human reflection on family and home-on what we choose and what's already chosen for us. It's about our flawed attempts at loving and being loved, forgiving and being forgiven. It's the rare novel that manages to be funny and sad and honest all at once-awake to the mundane miracles of our lives. Bryan Washington is one of a kind." - Rachel Khong
"Palaver has my heart. The days have felt less heavy while I've gotten to spend time in the novel's capacious world and I can already tell I'll want to reread soon. Bryan Washington is a genius and you want this gorgeous book." - R O Kwon
"Gripping, beautiful, honest, unlike anything else on the bookshelf! A great work by one of America's greatest young writers, Palaver will break and remake your heart. A book I will be sending to everyone I know." - Andrew Sean Greer
"Palaver is the pinnacle of what has become Washington's classic approach to writing: care, humor, tenderness, and an embrace of human beings at their most vulnerable, lovely, and wounded. It's such a joy to see the summation of his generosity of thinking and living actualized in the sentence. Fiction-no-life is better because Washington is writing." - Ocean Vuong
"Few writers write about tenderness as Bryan Washington does-unadorned tenderness that is full of heart and humor but steers clear from familiar sentimentalities and convenient solutions. With deep understanding of human relationships, Palaver is a rare novel that offers companionship to solitary readers and lonely souls." - Yiyun Li
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