The Dreamers

Description

'Riveting, profoundly moving' Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven 'Beautiful and devastating' Red 'Thought-provoking and profound' Cosmopolitan Imagine a world where sleep could trap you, for days, for weeks, for months... She sleeps through sunrise. She sleeps through sunset. And yet, in those first few hours, the doctors can find nothing else wrong. She looks like an ordinary girl sleeping ordinary sleep. Karen Thompson Walker's second novel tells the mesmerising story of a town transformed by a mystery illness that locks people in perpetual sleep and triggers extraordinary, life-altering dreams. One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her room and falls asleep. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster. Written in luminous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking and beautiful novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life if only we are awakened to them. Praise for The Age of Miracles: 'What a remarkable, beautifully wrought novel' Curtis Sittenfeld 'A beautifully observed coming-of-age tale... nimble, delicate and emotionally sophisticated' Observer 'Hauntingly believable... an impressive and quietly terrifying book' Sunday Times 'A stunner from the first page... I loved this novel and can't wait to see what this remarkable writer will do next' Justin Cronin

Karen Thompson Walker is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. A former book editor, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work. Born and raised in San Diego, California, she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

'Harrowing, riveting, profoundly moving, and beautifully written... this book is stunning' Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven 'This beautiful and devastating novel has a dream-like quality of its own' Red 'Lovely, lyrical and scary... a mesmerising read' Psychologies 'A thought-provoking and profound story' Cosmopolitan 'Lyrical and beguiling... a deeply immersive novel about a community in peril... and the choices we make when our lives, and those of our loved ones, are in danger' The Observer 'A modern Midsummer Night's Dream... Walker paints a haunting canvas exploring time, memory, consciousness, and youth' Marisha Pessl, author of Night Film 'Frighteningly powerful, beautiful, and uncanny... a love story and also a horror story' Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove 'This is a profound novel, and a deeply moving one... she takes a terrifying situation and reveals it as a thing of beauty' Robin Black, author of Life Drawing 'A slow-building, philosophical and unique novel... at once a thought-provoking character study and a subtle science fiction tale' Culturefly 'Powerful and moving... written with symphonic sweep' New York Times Book Review '[An] imaginative, disturbing and ultimately spellbinding narrative, which asks provokative questions about our concepts of time and connection, and the bounds of possibility for life on earth' Vogue 'Powerful, thoughtful and entirely original' PopSugar