Everything impresses in this darkly iridescent, utterly captivating flight.
Let No One Sleep
After Lucía loses her job at an IT firm, she has a vision of her future career as a taxi driver, brought on by the intoxicating opera floating through her apartment’s air vent. She obtains her taxi license and meets the neighbor responsible for the music. Calaf is the man’s name, which also happens to be the name of the character in Puccini’s Turandot and the bird Lucía received on her tenth birthday from her long-since-dead mother. When he moves out of her building, Lucía becomes obsessed, driving through Madrid and searching for him on every corner, meeting intriguing people along the way. What follows is a phantasmagoria of coincidence, betrayal, and revenge, featuring Millás’s singular dark humor.
Let No One Sleep is a delirious novel in which the mundane and extraordinary collide, art revives and devastates, and identity is unhinged by the treacherous forces of contemporary society.
Let No One Sleep is translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead.
Big Other Book Award Finalist
TorNightfire.com “Books We’re Excited About” selection
Bookshop.org “New Releases” selection
Malvern Books “Book of the Day” selection
Powell’s Books Staff Pick
Ebook
- ISBN
- 9781942658948
Paperback
- ISBN
- 9781942658931
Read excerpts from Juan José Millás’s new novel Let No One Sleep at Shelf Unbound and the Literary Hub.
Juan José Millás is a bestselling Spanish author and recipient of Spain’s most prestigious literary prizes: the Premio Nadal, Premio Planeta, and Premio Nacional de Narrativa. He is the author of several short story collections and works of nonfiction as well as over a dozen novels, including three published in North America: From the Shadows, Let No One Sleep, and Only Smoke. A regular contributor to El País, Millás has also won many awards for his journalism. He lives in Madrid.
visit author page »Praise for Let No One Sleep
Deftly blurs the line between reality and the absurd. . . . Coincidences are plentiful and may remind American readers of Paul Auster’s mode. Millás tips his cap to his Latin American literary cousins in his fantastical denouement in which he returns to a scene akin to the punishment of Prometheus.
Masterly. . . . A disquieting fantasy of the Kafkian variety.
— Library Journal
Lovers of quirky, fantastical tales will delight in this offering from Madrid, Spain. . . . What a tale! . . . Grand translation by Thomas Bunstead.
— Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)
Offers as much unexpected, whirlwindish fun as its predecessor [From the Shadows]. Let No One Sleep is darkly funny, unabashedly weird, and charmingly playful.
— Jeremy Garber, Powell’s Books (Portland, OR)
Quirky, darkly humorous, a stunning translated work . . . with smart and nuanced characters.
— Andrienne Cruz, Azusa City Library (Azusa, CA)