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  • Published: 3 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9781473568525
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 176

Sleep Donation




An uncanny novella imagining a deadly epidemic of insomnia, by the Pulitzer shortlisted writer of Swamplandia!

'Sleep Donation has a dreamlike beauty while remaining ominous and off-kilter. Parts of it gave me nightmares' Stephen King

An epidemic of insomnia has left America crippled with exhaustion.

Thankfully the Slumber Corps agency provides a lifeline, transfusing sleep to sufferers from healthy volunteers. Recruitment manager Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the disaster, has spent the last seven years enlisting new donors. But when she meets the mysterious Donor Y and Baby A – whose sleep can be universally accepted – her faith in the organisation and in her own motives begins to unravel.

Fully illustrated and featuring a brand-new 'Nightmare Appendix', this uncanny and prescient novella from the bestselling author of Swamplandia! will haunt your sleepless nights.

Praise for Sleep Donation:

‘Russell's ability to balance the quirky and the absurd with psychological acumen…turns this unbelievable world into something more than dreamlike’ NPR
‘Russell writes with such assurance and speed that she puts the reader under a spell for the duration of her story’ New York Times
‘Russell has a keen sense of dramatic timing and an even sharper ability to turn an internal state into its own weather system’ Boston Globe

  • Published: 3 September 2020
  • ISBN: 9781473568525
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 176

About the author

Karen Russell

Karen Russell, a native of Miami, has been featured in the New Yorker's debut fiction issue, was chosen as one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in 2007, and was named one of New Yorker magazine's 20 Under 40. Her first collection of short stories, St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, was longlisted for the Guardian first book award. Her novel, Swamplandia!, was longlisted for the 2011 Orange Prize and shortlisted for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

Altogether Karen has now won 2 National Magazine awards and had 4 of her stories published in Best American Short Stories. Both Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove have been US bestsellers. And in 2013 Karen won a MacArthur ‘Genius’ Grant. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

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