322pp., paperback, Bloomsbury, London, 2025
ISBN: 9781526687142
At the airport Sara is pulled aside by agents from the Risk Assessment Administration and told that data collected from her dreams has determined that she's a threat to her husband, and for his safety will be kept under observation at a retention centre for 21 days. When any deviation from the ever-changing rules can result in her stay at the facility being extended, she realises getting back to her family is going to cost more than an attempt at good behaviour.
"A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future where data collection penetrates interior life, The Dream Hotel is also an elegant meditation on identity, motherhood, and what we sacrifice, unthinkingly, for the sake of convenience" Jennifer Egan, author of The Candy House
"The Dream Hotel offers a stark vision of the future ... but Laila Lalami's extraordinary new novel is more than just a political warning; the book is an exploration of the psyche itself, the strange ungovernable forces of fate and emotion that make us human" Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind