The Dream Hotel

By (author) Lalami, Laila
Short description/annotation:
A gripping, inventive and terrifying speculative mystery about privacy, freedom and survival – from the Pulitzer Prize and Booker Prize nominated author
Description:

‘A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future’ JENNIFER EGAN
‘Extraordinary’ RUMAAN ALAM
‘Absolutely unputdownable’ SANDRA NEWMAN

Sara is returning home from a conference abroad when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside at the airport. Using data from her dreams, their algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming her husband. For his safety, she must be transferred to a retention centre, and kept under observation for twenty-one days.

But as Sara arrives to be monitored alongside other dangerous dreamers, she discovers that with every deviation from the facility’s strict and ever-shifting rules, their stays can be extended – and that getting home to her family is going to cost much more than just three weeks of good behaviour . . .

The Dream Hotel is a gripping speculative mystery about the seductive dangers of the technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier. As terrifying as it is inventive, it explores how well we can ever truly know those around us – even with the most invasive surveillance systems in place.

Review quote:
I was utterly gripped, caught up, as if I was living the same nightmare as Sara. It felt terrifyingly and convincingly close
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A terrifying, thought-provoking and timely exploration of the inevitable march of algorithms and data-harvesting into our innermost lives. The Dream Hotel offers not only a real-feeling diorama of an extensively-surveilled prison population, but a masterclass in the art of cortisol-raising - to be filed alongside The Trial and The School for Good Mothers
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The Dream Hotel offers a stark vision of the future – in which America is a surveillance state, ruled by the intertwined forces of capital and government, powered by an all-too-fallible algorithm that determines criminality based on citizen’s dreams. That’s plainly a metaphor for extant practices of social control, 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
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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
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A thought provoking and compellingly plausible novel. Totally immersive and unputdownable
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Absolutely unputdownable. Lalami''s protagonist is flawed in ways that frustrate and panic us partly because they''re so relatable: these are the mistakes we would end up making; this is how we would find ourselves the victims of the new security technologies that promise to keep us safe. It''s also a great work about the warped logic of mass incarceration; a sci-fi take on The Mars Room for the era of ubiquitous surveillance. This is one I''ll be thinking about for a long time.
Review quote:
Stellar ... There are echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale here – as Margaret Atwood does in that book, Lalami builds a convincing near-future dystopia out of current events ... But Lalami’s scenario is unique and well-imagined – interspersed report sheets, transcripts, and terms-of-service lingo have a realistic, poignant lyricism that exposes the cruel bureaucracy in which Sara is trapped .