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Laila Lalami

March 12 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Magic City Books is thrilled to welcome Pulitzer Prize finalist Laila Lalami for a free, in-store program to celebrate her new novel, The Dream Hotel, on Wednesday March 12 at 7:00 pm. This event will take place in the Algonquin Room at Magic City Books, 221 E Archer Street in the Tulsa Arts District.

Laila Lalami the author of five best-selling and award winning books including The Moor’s Account and The Other Americans. Her books have been translated into twenty languages and her writing regularly appears in the Los Angeles TimesThe Washington PostThe NationHarper’sThe Guardian, and The New York Times.

Lalami’s new book, The Dream Hotel, is a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

The Dream Hotel will be published March 4 by Pantheon Books. The Dream Hotel and other books by Laila Lalami are for sale at Magic City Books and will be for sale at the event on March 12. You can also order a copy of The Dream Hotel online at: https://magiccitybooks.square.site/product/the-dream-hotel/3120.

About The Dream Hotel

From Laila Lalami–the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)–comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.

The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.

Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.

Laila Lalami is the author of five books, including The Moor’s Account, which won the American Book Award, the Arab-American Book Award, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; was on the longlist for the Booker Prize; and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her most recent novel, The Other Americans, was a national bestseller, won the Simpson/Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her books have been translated into twenty languages. Lalami’s writing appears regularly in the Los Angeles TimesThe Washington PostThe NationHarper’sThe Guardian, and The New York Times. She has been awarded fellowships from the British Council, the Fulbright Program, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. She lives in Los Angeles.

Details

Date:
March 12
Time:
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm

Organizer

Magic City Books

Venue

Magic City Books
221 E. Archer St.
Tulsa, OK 74103 United States
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