My Person

'Mutonji writes sharply about the subtle ruptures endemic to formative friendships' RAVEN LEILANI 'A fresh, flamboyant take on modern friendships - tremendously fly and enjoyable' DIANA EVANS 'Nuanced and fearless . . . Told with subtlety and verve' NUSSAIBAH YOUNIS 'I want to, like, I don't know how else to say it but, I want to unknow you.' A moment of silence. Then Margot started laughing. Tania and Margot, best friends for over twenty years, are preparing to host their monthly dinner party when Tania tells Margot this isn't working for her anymore. But how do you extricate yourself from someone whose family owns your apartment, who has taken you in as their own, even claims you as their 'person'? In the midst of a tense will-they-won't-they break-up, Tania and Margot are forced to reckon with where it all went wrong . . . or whether they were simply wrong for each other to begin with. A taut, piercing exploration of girlhood and identity, and the ways in which world-defining friendships can be both beautiful and excruciating, My Person is an addictive, astutely observed novel from a major new talent.

Téa Mutonji's first book, the story collection Shut Up You're Pretty, was shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (2019) and won the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award (2020) and the Trillium Book Award (2020). My Person started as her thesis project at NYU, where she received the Jill Davis Fellowship. This is her first novel.