The Switch

Propulsive and suspenseful, a literary thriller about identity, justice, and what happens to the soul when a man gets a taste of absolute power.

The Switch is a high-stakes legal heist about a man who becomes a Supreme Court justice for twenty-four hours by stealing another man’s identity—in order to flip a single vote and change the law of the land.

Jamal El Amine, a disillusioned immigration lawyer, is recruited for the impossible: become Justice Jeremy Jay, the most hated judge in America. After surgery and eighteen months of training, he must fool Jay’s family, his clerks, and eight of the sharpest legal minds in the country. But stepping into Jay’s life means inheriting his secrets, his fractured family, and a degree of power Jamal has never imagined. As the deception deepens, Jamal becomes frighteningly good at being Jay—and discovers what it feels like to change millions of lives with a word or a signature.

“I became an American citizen after years of visas and racial profiling at passport control. Naturalization is supposed to mark the end of uncertainty: you take the oath and the question of whether you belong is settled. The novel opens where that promise cracks, with Jamal sent to secondary inspection, flagged because his face no longer matches his brand-new passport. Told with the pleasure of a heist, The Switch is the tale of an impostor who sets out to save lives by stealing a seat on the highest court, and finds that the hardest thing to keep intact is not his cover but his integrity.

I chose the Supreme Court for my first English-language thriller for its novelistic appeal, its rituals and its secrecy, but above all because it is the ideal place to study power and time: nine justices, restrained only by the reputation of their institution, shaping the law, and millions of lives, for generations.”

–Sabri Louatah

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