Lucid Dreams

A surreal and intimate novel about a disillusioned artist who, plagued by mysterious visions, must navigate a series of personal and existential crises that upend their way of life, by the award-winning author of Brown Girls.

Fresh off the success of their first novel, a writer – intense, ambitious, and increasingly embittered by the purpose of art – struggles with feelings of despair. Despite achieving their childhood dream, they find themself dissatisfied and despondent in a post-pandemic world that feels violent and unstable.

Amidst this turmoil, and a looming deadline for their second book, the writer tries and fails to create. Instead, they begin to experience strange hallucinatory visions. Enigmatic letters and sketches appear, written in handwriting that isn’t their own, followed by sightings of a mysterious figure, which blur the line between the narrator’s fiction and lived reality.

These challenges – psychological, artistic, spiritual – and the secrets the writer harbours, alienate them from their loved ones, their art, and themself. Despite forays into learning a heritage language, Tagalog, traveling abroad, and changing their look, the visions persist – until one fateful event, which draws the writer and the mysterious figure together.

With her signature daring approach and evocative prose, Daphne Palasi Andreades explores immigration and modern womanhood in this wholly original novel. Lucid Dreams examines how we find purpose, the nature of change, and the courage it takes to be fully alive today.

Reviews

Praise for Lucid Dreams:

‘Exhilaratingly candid and elegant … a forceful, vivid experimental work on language and lineage, on disorientation and immigration – and, ultimately, an utterly singular coming-of-age tale’ Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West

‘A searing and soulful novel about an artist learning to dream on their own terms. As heartfelt as it is audacious, Lucid Dreams poses profound questions about love, ambition, and selfhood, challenging us all to look beneath the surface of our own desires’ Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks

About the author

Daphne Palasi Andreades (she/they) is an artist and educator from Queens, New York. Daphne’s innovative debut novel, Brown Girls, was hailed as “fearless” by the New York Times, and was a finalist for several prestigious awards: the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction – the largest prize for women and nonbinary writers in the world – the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the New American Voices Award. Daphne was the 2024 Sidney Harman Fiction Writer-In-Residence at The City University of New York, Baruch College. Her work has been taught to students across numerous universities and writing workshops, and has been published in over seventy countries. She earned her MFA from Columbia University. Lucid Dreams is her second novel.