Synopsis
‘Magnificent’ - Annie Ernaux, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Years
‘Supremely skillful’ - The Telegraph
‘One of the best books I’ve read in a long time’ - i-D
France, 1981. A small rural village is gripped by an epidemic of heroin usage. Désiré, once the pride of the family, has become one of its many ‘sleeping children’, found slumped, unconscious, in the street....
Details
12 March 2026240 pages
9781035026500Imprint: Picador
Reviews
Without ever raising your voice, you have shattered the family silence that scabbed over tragedy and produced a work so powerful, so moving that it lingers long after reading. Magnificent!Annie Ernaux, Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Sleeping Children is a supremely skilful account of Aids, drugs and 1980s France . . . as a work of social history covering decades, [it] is illuminating and effective . . . it will be a tough reader who doesn’t choke back a tearThe Telegraph
A beautiful testament to the power of storytellingSuzanne Smith, nb.
Moving and articulate, precise and sweeping . . . one of the best books I’ve read in a long timeDouglas Greenwood, i-D
