Sleepless

The world is divided into those who can sleep and those who can’t.

What is it like to live with chronic insomnia? For Marie Darrieussecq, not sleeping began after the birth of her first child and continues more than twenty years later.

In Sleepless, she recounts her own experiences alongside those of fellow insomniacs, mostly writers, some of whom claim a connection between insomnia and creativity. With her inimitable humour, she describes her countless attempts to find a remedy, including consulting a somnologist.

Darrieussecq discusses bedrooms, beds, the homeless, refugees, trauma, our wakefulness online, and how our relationship with animals is connected to whether we can sleep.

Sleepless will awaken you to the otherness of our world.

‘Amid the torrent of publications in the new sleep science, this is the only book I know that concedes to sleep its proper majesty and its own dark poetry.’ J. M. Coetzee

‘Sleepless is a feast. Darrieussecq brings a world of personal experience to an examination of insomnia from every possible perspective, from the bodily to the cultural. Her range of reference is extraordinary. The result is intoxicating.’ Michael McGirr, author of Snooze: The Lost Art of Sleep

‘A funny, moving, metaphysical and novelistic self-portrait that is also a portrait of our times.’ Elle

‘This wonderful work of nonfiction is a veritable prism through which interconnected and complementary ideas are refracted simultaneously…This book is as lucid as it is literary, and it is not just for insomniacs. If you’ve ever felt existential dread prompted by the threats of the Anthropocene, or wondered about the 4am lives of 20th-century writers, you’ll find much in Sleepless to contemplate and enliven.’ Readings