diff --git a/sqlparse/lexer.py b/sqlparse/lexer.py
index 966cdb2c..c7fe50cc 100644
--- a/sqlparse/lexer.py
+++ b/sqlparse/lexer.py
@@ -128,7 +128,11 @@ def get_tokens(self, text, encoding=None):
                 try:
                     text = text.decode('utf-8')
                 except UnicodeDecodeError:
-                    text = text.decode('unicode-escape')
+                    # Fall back to latin-1 rather than unicode-escape: the
+                    # latter evaluates backslash escapes (\n, \x41, ',
+                    # octal) in the input, so the parsed token stream would
+                    # no longer match the raw bytes the database receives.
+                    text = text.decode('latin-1')
         else:
             raise TypeError(f"Expected text or file-like object, got {type(text)!r}")
 
diff --git a/tests/test_parse.py b/tests/test_parse.py
index 34800cb7..3169dfd2 100644
--- a/tests/test_parse.py
+++ b/tests/test_parse.py
@@ -457,6 +457,17 @@ def test_non_ascii():
     assert statement._pprint_tree() is None
 
 
+def test_non_utf8_bytes_preserve_escapes():
+    # Non-UTF-8 bytes fall back to a single-byte decode and must not have
+    # backslash escape sequences evaluated (unicode-escape would turn
+    # "\\x41" into "A" and "\\n" into a newline), which desyncs the parsed
+    # token stream from the raw bytes the database receives.
+    s = b"SELECT '\\x41', '\\n' \xff"
+    stmts = sqlparse.parse(s)
+    assert len(stmts) == 1
+    assert str(stmts[0]) == "SELECT '\\x41', '\\n' \xff"
+
+
 def test_get_real_name():
     # issue 369
     s = "update a t set t.b=1"