Sleepless

'Marie Darrieussecq invites us on an extended patrol of the corridors of Hotel Insomnia in the company of the ghosts of the famous sleep-deprived, then turns to the story of her own intimate tussle with sleep that will not come. 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

'An exhilarating book that kept me up and got me thinking.'
- Le Canard Enchaine

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

'Sleepless reaches far into our sleepless nights.... The result is a masterful work on the art of sleep.'
- Les Inrockuptibles

'An exciting and poetic work, both an intimate narrative and a meditative essay.'
- Telerama

'A hypnotic, inexhaustible book.'
- Philosophie Magazine

'Sleepless is an amazing text, between prose and document, reflection and quotation, from Kant to the film Alien, from Kafka to Gilles Barbier, from Gabon to the Basque country, and through various hotel rooms occupied by sleepless nights.... If what we read is extremely intimate and personal, everything about us, everything in us, can also be found in these pages. One can read Sleepless to project oneself into an insomniac sister; one can read it for the author's sparkling stories and analyses, for her incredibly smart readings of Kafka and Perec, or for her reflections on capitalism, burn-out and the race for productivity that repudiates everything that does not fit into its master plan.'
- Diacritik