The Dream Hotel

Reviews

A Most Anticipated Book of 2025 from Goodreads, People, TIME, TODAY, The Washington Post, New York Times Book Review Podcast, Esquire, Marie Claire, The National, New Scientist, Literary Hub, Deseret News, Kirkus, Screen Rant, The OC Register, Electric Literature, Language Arts, and The Crimson White

"Brilliant...Makes you question why we aren’t doing more to protect our privacy right now."
—Ann Patchett in TheSkimm

“One of the best high-concept hooks of the year…It feels like a mix between Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and Wim Wender’s Until the End of the World, written in Lalami’s silky and celebrated prose.”
—Esquire

“Lalami’s keen insight into our less-than-free society is also reflected in The Dream Hotel’s discussion and engagement with data…The Dream Hotel does not feel like science fiction but rather a commentary on a near future that seems frighteningly close, just out of view.”
—Pop Matters

“A gripping, Kafkaesque foray into an all-too-plausible future where data collection penetrates interior life, The Dream Hotel is also an elegant meditation on identity and what we sacrifice, unthinkingly, for the sake of convenience.”
—Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Candy House

“The Dream Hotel offers a stark vision of the future—in which America is a surveillance state, ruled by the intertwined forces of capital and government, powered by all-too-fallible algorithm that determines criminality based on citizen’s dreams. That’s plainly a metaphor for extant practices of social control, but Laila Lalami’s extraordinary new novel is more than just a political warning; the book is an exploration of the psyche itself, the strange ungovernable forces of fate and emotion that make us human.”
—Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind

"Even our dreams are surveilled and punished in this alarmingly plausible novel by the virtuosic Laila Lalami."
—Electric Literature

"I loved The Dream Hotel . . . I was utterly gripped, caught up, as if I was living the same nightmare as Sara. It felt terrifyingly and convincingly close."
—Esther Freud, author of Hideous Kinky

“Stellar…There are echoes of The Handmaid’s Tale here—as Margaret Atwood does in that book, Lalami builds a convincing near-future dystopia out of current events…But Lalami’s scenario is unique and well-imagined—interspersed report sheets, transcripts, and terms-of-service lingo have a realistic, poignant lyricism that exposes the cruel bureaucracy in which Sara is trapped…And the story exposes the particular perniciousness of big tech’s capacity to exploit our every movement, indeed practically every thought…Striking…An engrossing and troubling dystopian tale.”
—Kirkus, starred review

"A stirring dystopian tale of dwindling privacy and freedom in the digital age...The premise calls to mind Philip K. Dick’s The Minority Report, but Lalami’s version is chillingly original, echoing widespread fears about the abuse of surveillance technology, and she balances high-concept speculative elements with deep character work. This surreal story feels all too plausible."
—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Fans of The Minority Report by Philip K. Dick and Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng will enjoy this literary novel set in the near future.”
—Booklist, starred review
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