The Sleeping World: A Novel
Description
In this “astonishing and haunting debut” (Publishers Weekly), a young woman searching for her lost brother is willing to risk everything amidst the riots, protests, and uprisings of post-Franco Spain.
Spain, 1977. Military rule is over. Bootleg punk music oozes out of illegal basement bars, uprisings spread across towns, fascists fight anarchists for political control, and students perform protest art in the city center, rioting against the old government, the undecided new order, against the universities, against themselves…
Mosca is an intelligent, disillusioned university student, whose younger brother is among the “disappeared,” taken by the police two years ago, now presumed dead. Spurred by the turmoil around them, Mosca and her friends commit an act that carries their rebellion too far and sends them spiraling out of their provincial hometown. But the further they go, the more Mosca believes her brother is alive and the more she is willing to do to find him.
The Sleeping World is a “searing, beautifully written” (Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban) and daring novel about youth, freedom, and our most visceral need: to keep our loved ones safe.
Praise for The Sleeping World: A Novel
"A politically conscious adventure story in which Fuentes manages to strike a powerful balance between vivid characterization and ideological critique, capturing a generation for whom David Bowie and the Ramones were not merely pop icons but heroes.”
— The New York Times Book Review
"A searing, beautifully written novel that captures the exhilaration and dangers of 1970s post-Franco Spain. Mosca, a bitterly jaded young woman, goes on a harrowing search for her missing brother—and the history that destroyed their lives. Violent, heartbreaking, unforgettable, The Sleeping World is a stunning debut."
— Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban
"An adventure rife with emotion and sacrifice."
— Ms. Magazine
"[An] astonishing and haunting debut."
— Publishers Weekly
