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Awake in the Floating City

A Novel

Author Susanna Kwan On Tour
Hardcover
$28.00 US
| $37.99 CAN
Knopf | Pantheon
On sale May 13, 2025 | 320 Pages | 9780593701409
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A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE • An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

"An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake." —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.
A Most Anticipated Book of the Year from People, San Francisco Chronicle, Electric Literature, Axios San Francisco, and HeatMap

"[A] tender, speculative novel that imagines [Kwan's] home city flooded and largely abandoned—and how two of its last remaining residents find unlikely connection in disaster."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"Awake in the Floating City is an astonishing work of art, rich with attention, patience, and love: the rare elegy that hums with hope, and makes the strongest case I’ve ever read for remembering the people and places that matter to us. Kwan’s prose pulses with uncommon attention to the natural world, attuned to both its beauty and devastation. This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake."
—Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

“What book is like this? What post-apocalyptic vision dares be so gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm and caring and care-taking? Luminous, wise, Susanna Kwan's story of a flooded future San Francisco expands the known world, making room within its unbearable devastation for beauty, compassion, and love. This book is a labor undertaken by an imagination able to mourn and celebrate in the same breath. An argument runs through it, like a bright live wire, that to attend to loss—to hold the dying world's hand and say, ‘I'm here’—is a way to be fully alive. And so it is an argument for life.”
—Meng Jin, author of Little Gods
SUSANNA KWAN is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Awake in the Floating City is her first novel. View titles by Susanna Kwan

Discussion Guide for Awake in the Floating City

Provides questions, discussion topics, suggested reading lists, introductions and/or author Q&As, which are intended to enhance reading groups’ experiences.

(Please note: the guide displayed here is the most recently uploaded version; while unlikely, any page citation discrepancies between the guide and book is likely due to pagination differences between a book’s different formats.)

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About

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK FROM PEOPLE MAGAZINE • An utterly transporting debut novel about the unexpected relationship between an artist and the 130-year-old woman she cares for—two of the last people living in a flooded San Francisco of the future, the home neither is ready to leave.

"An astonishing work of art...This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake." —Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

Bo knows she should go. Years of rain have drowned the city and almost everyone else has fled. Her mother was carried away in a storm surge and ever since, Bo has been alone. She is stalled: an artist unable to make art, a daughter unable to give up the hope that her mother may still be alive. Half-heartedly, she allows her cousin to plan for her escape—but as the departure day approaches, she finds a note slipped under her door from Mia, an elderly woman who lives in her building and wants to hire Bo to be her caregiver. Suddenly, Bo has a reason to stay.

Mia can be prickly, and yet still she and Bo forge a connection deeper than any Bo has had with a client. Mia shares stories of her life that pull Bo back toward art, toward the practice she thought she’d abandoned. Listening to Mia, allowing her memories to become entangled with Bo’s own, she’s struck by how much history will be lost as the city gives way to water. Then Mia’s health turns, and Bo determines to honor their disappearing world and this woman who’s brought her back to it, a project that teaches her the lessons that matter most: how to care, how to be present, how to commemorate a life and a place, soon to be lost forever.

Reviews

A Most Anticipated Book of the Year from People, San Francisco Chronicle, Electric Literature, Axios San Francisco, and HeatMap

"[A] tender, speculative novel that imagines [Kwan's] home city flooded and largely abandoned—and how two of its last remaining residents find unlikely connection in disaster."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"Awake in the Floating City is an astonishing work of art, rich with attention, patience, and love: the rare elegy that hums with hope, and makes the strongest case I’ve ever read for remembering the people and places that matter to us. Kwan’s prose pulses with uncommon attention to the natural world, attuned to both its beauty and devastation. This is the kind of book that changes you, that leaves you seeing more vividly, and living more fully, in its wake."
—Rachel Khong, author of Real Americans

“What book is like this? What post-apocalyptic vision dares be so gorgeous, lush, struck with humor and light, so warm and caring and care-taking? Luminous, wise, Susanna Kwan's story of a flooded future San Francisco expands the known world, making room within its unbearable devastation for beauty, compassion, and love. This book is a labor undertaken by an imagination able to mourn and celebrate in the same breath. An argument runs through it, like a bright live wire, that to attend to loss—to hold the dying world's hand and say, ‘I'm here’—is a way to be fully alive. And so it is an argument for life.”
—Meng Jin, author of Little Gods

Author

SUSANNA KWAN is an artist and writer from San Francisco. Awake in the Floating City is her first novel. View titles by Susanna Kwan

Guides

Discussion Guide for Awake in the Floating City

Provides questions, discussion topics, suggested reading lists, introductions and/or author Q&As, which are intended to enhance reading groups’ experiences.

(Please note: the guide displayed here is the most recently uploaded version; while unlikely, any page citation discrepancies between the guide and book is likely due to pagination differences between a book’s different formats.)

Read More

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News From the Author

Dear Librarians: A Letter from Susanna Kwan, Author of Awake in the Floating City

“When I think of libraries, a flipbook of memories flashes through my mind. My local – the one I grew up with – is Watsonia Library in the north-east of Melbourne, Australia. It’s a low white building plonked right beside a busy train line and directly underneath two enormous transmission towers. Not exactly a dreamy location, but for many years it was my favourite place in the world.”

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Dear Librarians: A Letter from Susanna Kwan, Author of Awake in the Floating City

News From the Author

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