Dormi!

Maya is an insomniac whom nothing and nobody can help. She wanders the city at night envying those who can take a good night’s rest for granted. When her boyfriend walks out on her, she meets the equally insomniac, much older Benoit, and they feel an immediate mutual sympathy. Maya recognizes in him a fellow-sufferer, and he helps to make her existence a little more bearable.Annelies Verbeke writes about people one cannot help but feel sympathy for, so poignant is their yearning for a normal life. At the same time they realize that, with their expectations and longings, the superficial outside world will not satisfy them. Annelies Verbeke uses powerful, well-chosen metaphors to underpin her story and she is penetrating in rendering her characters’ loneliness, impotence and feelings of insignificance. Most surprising of all is the tone of the book: simultaneously laconic, spare and poetic, with a dash of irony, and nevertheless brimming with genuine sympathy. Sleep! is a convincing novel in which the author uses the complex personalities of her characters to pen a strikingly insightful vision of life and its experiences.