The Dream Hotel: A Novel

(Paperback, Large Print Edition)

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From Laila Lalamithe Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a maestra of literary fiction (NPR)comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one womans fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAAs algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.

Reviews

StellarThere are echoes of The Handmaids Tale hereas Margaret Atwood does in that book, Lalami builds a convincing near-future dystopia out of current eventsBut Lalamis scenario is unique and well-imaginedinterspersed report sheets, transcripts, and terms-of-service lingo have a realistic, poignant lyricism that exposes the cruel bureaucracy in which Sara is trappedAnd the story exposes the particular perniciousness of big techs capacity to exploit our every movement, indeed practically every thoughtStrikingAn engrossing and troubling dystopian tale.

Kirkus, starred review

"A stirring dystopian tale of dwindling privacy and freedom in the digital age...The premise calls to mind Philip K. Dicks The Minority Report, but Lalamis version is chillingly original, echoing widespread fears about the abuse of surveillance technology, and she balances high-concept speculative elements with deep character work. This surreal story feels all too plausible."

Publishers Weekly, starred review

Fans of The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick and Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng will enjoy this literary novel set in the near future.

Booklist, starred review

Author Bio

LAILA LALAMI is the author of five books, including The Moors Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; was on the longlist for the Booker Prize; and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Lalami's writing appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Harpers, The Guardian, and The New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University.