Featured Author Event: Karen Thompson Walker (Brooklyn)
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Join Karen Thompson Walker, the New York Times bestselling author of THE AGE OF MIRACLES, for a discussion of her new novel, THE DREAMERS, with fellow Penguin Random House author Emily St. John Mandel (STATION ELEVEN), on Tuesday night, January 15, at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn. The hour-long free event begins at 7:30 p.m.
In THE DREAMERS, an ordinary town is transformed by a mysterious illness that triggers perpetual sleep. One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as 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. Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?
Here is a sampling of advance praise for THE DREAMERS:
“Frighteningly powerful, beautiful, and uncanny, THE DREAMERS is a love story and also a horror story—a symphonic achievement, alternating intimate moments with a panoramic capture of a crisis in progress.”—Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove
“A modern Midsummer Night’s Dream . . . In this wonderful novel, Walker paints a haunting canvas exploring time, memory, consciousness, and youth.”—Marisha Pessl, author of Night Film
“What a book! I read THE DREAMERS in a dream of sorts myself, entirely transported into Karen Thompson Walker’s world of mysterious tragedy and infinite, if unexpected, compassion. This is a profound novel, and a deeply moving one. How she takes a terrifying situation and reveals it as a thing of beauty, a lesson in the human spirit, is a mystery to me, but she does exactly that, and fortunate readers will celebrate this extraordinary book.”—Robin Black, author of Life Drawing