Escape! (Paperback)

A propulsive debut novel following a has-been reality TV star and a disgraced producer who get one last shot at redemption on a show set on a remote island, only to discover that the plot twists are beyond what they ever imagined.

Everybody gets the story arc they deserve.

Kent Duvall, a faded reality show winner, just wants another chance at glory – to find his way out of his depressing life and back to his highlight reel. When a scandal is captured on camera at a charity event, he gets his shot, on a new jungle survival show with seven other contestants. Each of them has been cast as a type – Ruddy the bully, Miriam the nerd, Ashley the love interest – but everyone is more than they appear.

The contestants' goals seem simple – survive the wild, build a raft, win treasure. But Beck Bermann, a reality producer who suffered her own public shaming, sees them as characters in her redemption arc.

As the schemes and strategies spiral out, breakout camps sabotage each other and rival producers struggle to control the storyline. Soon the question becomes less about who will win than who will make it out in one piece.

Stephen Fishbach is a Pushcart Prize–winning writer and former television executive. A two-time Survivor USA contestant (voted onto the show the second time by more than ten million fans), he’s worked on the network side as a vice president at MTV and freelanced for a reality producers’ trade group. He cohosts a weekly Survivor podcast as well as the literary podcast Paraphrase. Stephen graduated with honours from Yale and received an MFA in fiction at NYU. In 2009 he was named one of People magazine’s hottest bachelors. His short story “To Sharks” – an excerpt from Escape! – was published by One Story and garnered Stephen the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.

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‘Stephen Fishbach writes with great energy and humor, as well as a deep understanding of human longing.’ Jonathan Safran Foer

“In Escape!, Stephen Fishbach shows how everything on reality television is artificial—except the humiliation, which is definitely real. It’s a scathing behind-the-scenes exposé, but also a heartfelt and tender story of people being turned into entertainment, then scrambling to edit themselves back into people.” —Nathan Hill, bestselling author of The Nix and Wellness

‘A thrilling, emotionally affecting deep dive into the perilous world of reality television production, in all its manipulative glory. In this sharp page-turner, Survivor maven and former contestant Stephen Fishbach captures the lives of both cast and crew, offering up a gorgeously written, compassionate, but ultimately devastating portrait of the lives of the human beings working inside (and often, crushed by) the entertainment machine.’ —Emily Nussbaum, author of Cue The Sun: The Invention of Reality TV and Staff Writer at The New Yorker

‘Stephen Fishbach channels his experience as a reality television star into this hilarious, biting, insightful, and ultimately heartfelt novel about our fame-obsessed culture and a show that pushes its cast to their emotional and physical limits. He can turn a sentence as well as he can boil a plot, and you'll be marvelling at the story even as you're hooting and cringing at the wild, reckless, and seemingly inescapable decisions the characters make.’ —Benjamin Percy, author of The Ninth Metal, Red Moon, The Dead Lands, and Thrill Me

‘Fishbach has pulled back the curtain on reality television and his resulting novel is razor-sharp and darkly unsettling. Escape! manages to be both a wicked romp of a page-turner and a poignant insider critique of fame, ambition, and the human craving for connection. You definitely won’t want to change the channel on this one.’ —Janelle Brown, New York Times bestselling author of What Kind of Paradise and Pretty Things

"Captivating, insightful, and incredibly propulsive, this novel delivers the escape a lot of us need right now. With an expert eye, Fishbach will take you both behind the scenes and amidst the drama of a reality contest show gone amok, with characters you'll root for and a plot that makes the pages fly."—J. Ryan Stradal, bestselling author of Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club “Stephen Fisbach’s Escape! dives into the dark magic of reality television, elevating ‘trash tv’ to a deep and thoughtful exploration of the struggle for identity and meaning, while at the same time delivering wickedly sharp humour, characters to root for, and a plot full of surprise twists that will have you binge-reading to find out what happens next, all while asking: who truly writes the story of our lives?” —Hannah Tinti, author of The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley “Escape! is the most refreshing novel I’ve read in years. Stephen Fishbach’s debut is funny, sharp, and wildly entertaining—a satire that follows a reality TV show as it spirals into a Lord of the Flies for our era. Fishbach writes with the confidence and wit of a seasoned pro, offering an insider’s view on reality television and our fame-obsessed culture, all while delivering propulsive storytelling. I tore through it in a single sitting. What a fantastic, fearless new talent.” —Lauren Wilkinson, author of American Spy

Stephen Fishbach is a Pushcart Prize-winning writer and former television executive. A two-time Survivor contestant (voted onto the show the second time by more than ten million fans), he's worked on the network side as a vice president at MTV and freelanced for a reality producers' trade group. He cohosts a weekly Survivor podcast as well as the literary podcast Paraphrase. Stephen graduated with honours from Yale and received an MFA in fiction at NYU. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and two daughters.