The Switch

Jamal El Amine is an immigration lawyer who quit his job, worn down by arbitrary detentions, ICE raids, and an unshakable sense of powerlessness. When a discreet law firm hires him and offers him more money than he’s ever earned, he has no way of suspecting that he’s been chosen for one reason only: his uncanny resemblance to Jeremy Jay, the newly appointed justice of the Supreme Court. A light-skinned Black man adopted at birth by a white Catholic couple, Jay has become a lightning rod for frustrations on all sides, a traitor to some and a trophy to others–and the recipient of more death threats than the rest of the judiciary combined.

Jamal’s assignment is as absurd as it is specific: after a series of minor surgeries and eighteen months of training, he is to commit an act of judicial sabotage and impersonate Justice Jay, the most hated man in America, for twenty-four hours. His mission: to change the outcome of a single vote on an immigration case that could allow the conservative supermajority to overturn a twenty-five-year-old precedent.

As the fateful day wears on, Jamal gets almost too good at being Jay, and somewhere along this mimetic ride he loses sight of the man he was before it began. Surrounded by financial comfort he has never known and wielding enough power to halt an execution with a single signature, he starts to wonder why he should ever go back…

Praise for Sabri Louatah:

“Ferrante. Knausgaard. Louatah. Three literary series that are better
than anything.”–Grazia

“Immense, and immensely popular.”–Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker

“An ambitious project…a compelling and expansive socio-political thriller…”–The Times Literary Supplement