Victim

“You will burn through Victim and find your hands scalded when you are done. It’s not just because of the tight, engaging prose and pitch perfect voice of our narrator, Javier—but because no one is innocent in this stinging satire that turns everything about meritocracy and success on its head. Boryga pulls no punches, and leaves you alternating rolling in laughter and cringing as a result.”
—Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming

"Andrew Boryga dismantles with audacious precision the lies upholding certain lives and the lethal undertow of truth. Blazing with insight, Victim is part social commentary and part requiem for the values of our time. This is a simply stellar debut."
—Patricia Engel, author of Infinite Country

"A strivers’ tale for the digital age and our identity-obsessed culture, Victim had me laughing out loud with its depiction of what can happen when clout-chasing goes wrong. Javier's media misadventures are hilarious, yes, and breathless in pace, and yet still will leave you pondering big questions past the last page, about the complexity of our stories and the dangers of flattening them. A fantastic, fresh addition to the canon of satire."
—Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev

"Victim is going to hurt some people's feelings. But that's exactly what smart, insightful social satire is meant to do. Andrew Boryga's dazzling debut novel is the story of a hustler whose game is to benefit from the struggles of other people. He's an identity politics confidence man. And yet he's also someone you come to care about, and worry for, as the stakes of his hustle grow and grow. This is a fearless and ambitious debut."
 —Victor LaValle, author of Lone Women

"Boryga is a preternaturally gifted new voice for the aftertimes. Victim is a dazzling, triumphant debut that acerbically unpacks hard truths behind this post-truth era in which social media, personal branding, and the wants of others distort the lenses through which we see ourselves. And eventually distort the lens through which we see the world. An absolute scream of a debut novel. It lands like a comet of truth—raw, brilliant, unstoppable."
—Daniel Peña, author of Bang

“Victim sizzles like Tito Puente on timbales.”
—Ernesto Quiñonez, author of Bodega Dreams

"Victim is bold, unforgettable, and wickedly funny. Andrew Boryga has written a pitch-perfect Stephen Glass cautionary tale of the 21st century and a scathing satire of the commodification of identity and experience in the attention economy. I absolutely loved it."
 —Leigh Stein, author of Self Care