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A Novel
by Daphne Palasi Andreades
A surreal and intimate novel about a disillusioned artist who, plagued by mysterious visions, must navigate a series of personal and existential crises that upend their way of life, by the award-winning author of Brown Girls.
Fresh off the success of their first novel, a writer—intense, ambitious, and embittered by the purpose of art—struggles with feelings of despair. Despite achieving a long-held dream, they find themself doubtful and despondent in a post-pandemic world that feels violent and unstable.
Amidst this turmoil, and a looming deadline for their next book, the writer tries and fails to create. Instead, they begin to experience strange hallucinatory visions. Enigmatic letters and sketches appear, written in handwriting that isn't their own, followed by sightings of a mysterious figure, which blur the line between the narrator's fiction and lived reality.
These challenges—psychological, artistic, spiritual—and the secrets the writer harbors, alienate them from their loved ones, their art, and themself. Despite forays into learning a heritage language, Tagalog, traveling abroad, and changing their look, the visions persist—until one fateful event, which draws the writer and the mysterious figure together.
With her signature daring approach and evocative prose, Daphne Palasi Andreades explores immigration, modern womanhood, and the tension between art and commerce, in this wholly original novel. Lucid Dreams examines how we find purpose, the nature of change, and the courage it takes to be fully alive today.
"Daphne Palasi Andreades has written a searing and soulful novel about an artist learning to dream on their own terms. As heartfelt as it is audacious, Lucid Dreams poses profound questions about love, ambition, and selfhood, challenging us all to look beneath the surface of our own desires. Lucid Dreams is a gorgeous sophomore novel that I feel will stay with me, and readers, for a long time." —Nadia Owusu, Whiting Award-winning author of Aftershocks: A Memoir
"Daphne Palasi Andreades has created an exhilaratingly candid and elegant chronicle of a writer wrestling with the commodification of literature and the purpose of art. Lucid Dreams is a forceful, vivid, experimental work on language and lineage, on disorientation and immigration—and, ultimately, an utterly singular coming-of-age tale on how to forge a new relationship with one's work. This novel is, in itself, an inspiration and a revolution for art-makers." —Aube Rey Lescure, author of River East, River West
This information about Lucid Dreams was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Daphne Palasi Andreades is an artist and educator from Queens, New York. Daphne's innovative debut novel, Brown Girls, was hailed as "fearless" by The New York Times, and was a finalist for several prestigious awards: the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction—the largest prize for women and nonbinary writers in the world—the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the New American Voices Award. Her work has been taught to students across numerous universities and writing workshops, and has been published in over seventy countries. In 2024, she served as the Writer-In-Residence at The City University of New York, Baruch College. She earned her MFA from Columbia University. Lucid Dreams is her second novel.
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