The Sleeping World A Novel

In this “astonishing and haunting debut” (Publishers Weekly), a young woman searching for her lost brother is willing to risk everything amidst the riots, protests, and uprisings of post-Franco Spain.

Spain, 1977. Military rule is over. Bootleg punk music oozes out of illegal basement bars, uprisings spread across towns, fascists fight anarchists for political control, and students perform protest art in the city center, rioting against the old government, the undecided new order, against the universities, against themselves…

Mosca is an intelligent, disillusioned university student, whose younger brother is among the “disappeared,” taken by the police two years ago, now presumed dead. Spurred by the turmoil around them, Mosca and her friends commit an act that carries their rebellion too far and sends them spiraling out of their provincial hometown. But the further they go, the more Mosca believes her brother is alive and the more she is willing to do to find him.

The Sleeping World is a “searing, beautifully written” (Cristina Garcia, author of Dreaming in Cuban) and daring novel about youth, freedom, and our most visceral need: to keep our loved ones safe.

Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes holds a BA from Brown University, an MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder and is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Georgia. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the Blue Mountain Center and a scholarship from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She has lived in Spain and France and grew up in Wisconsin.