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A Novel
by Kashana Cauley
When Jada Williams is relentlessly pursued by the Debt Police, she is left with no choice but to take down her student loan company with the help of two mall coworkers—from the author of the "lethally witty" (The New York Times Book Review) The Survivalists.
Jada Williams is good at judging people by their looks. From across the mall, she can tell not only someone's inseam and pants size, but exactly what style they need to transform their life. Too bad she's no longer using this superpower as a wardrobe designer to Hollywood stars, but for minimum wage plus commission at the Glendale mall.
When Jada is fired yet again, she is forced to outrun the newly instated Debt Police who are out for blood. But Jada, like any great antihero, is not going to wait for the cops to come kick her around. With the help of two other debt-burdened mall coworkers, she hatches a plan for revenge. Together the three women plan a heist to erase their student loans forever and get back at the system that promised them everything and then tried to take it back.
The Payback is a razor-sharp and hilarious dissection of race and capitalism from one of the most original and exciting writers at work today.
"A 30-something woman strikes back against her draconian student loan servicer in Cauley's raucous latest...Cauley burnishes her page-turner with shrewd commentary on the debt burden placed on first-generation college students. It's a knockout." —Publishers Weekly
"This is a winner, especially for millennials eager to burn their loan documents." —Booklist
"A dark comedy on the friendship and resourcefulness of three Black women who plan a caper to erase everyone's debts. Engaging, emotional, and entertaining." —Boston Globe, Best Books of Summer
"A novel of great fun and unforgettable fury, The Payback sharply questions the punitive systems we live within, the contradiction between social wellbeing and individual wellness, and what it means to work toward a decent life." —Megha Majumdar, bestselling author of A Burning
"A stylish, blazingly original take on the heist novel, The Payback is both a whip-smart critique of contemporary capitalism and a moving character study of the workers most often caught in its clutches." —Grace D. Li, New York Times bestselling author of Portrait of a Thief
This information about The Payback was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kashana Cauley is the author of The Payback and The Survivalists, which was named a best book of 2023 by the BBC, Today, Vogue, and more. Cauley is also a television writer, having worked on The Great North, Pod Save America on HBO, and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, and more. Find out more at KashanaCauley.com.
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People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
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