Excerpt from The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Two more steps and he'll be at 208. She can already smell the instant ramen on him, made with hot water from the tap and slurped at his desk before the start of his shift. Does he know he's the object of so much speculation? Does he care? Perhaps he gossips about the women, too, when he eats lunch with the other attendants or when they're bantering in the locker room after a long shift. One thing is certain: Hinton takes pride in his work, always handling device check in the morning rather than delegating it to a junior attendant. He never rushes through it, even when all the women are standing in the hallway, shivering from the cold.

No matter how long he takes to get to her, she doesn't lower her head to make it easier for him to reach behind her ear. It's a small thing, but it's what she can do to signal her resistance. He points the scanner at the back of her skull, and the scanner gives a beep, indicating that the neuroprosthetic on Retainee M-7493002 [username: Sara T. Hussein] hasn't been tampered with overnight.

She's about to turn around when he asks, "What's the matter?" His eyes are direct, unblinking. "You look a little off today."

How can he tell? But keeping her mouth shut is another thing Madison has taught Sara. A response, no matter how anodyne, might be used against her. She waits, hoping her face is blank enough, until he moves on to her roommate.

Now the day can begin.

It is a frigid morning in October, the morning of her thirty-eighth birthday.

Facing the small mirror above the sink, Sara pins her hair in a tight bun. Emily has her shoes on already; she's assigned to kitchen duty and has to be there early, before the breakfast bell. The women who've been at Madison awhile have learned the value of a routine, but newer retainees usually go right back to bed after device check. They're still in denial about their situation, still going over every detail of what happened to them, hoping to pick out the moment that tipped the algorithm's calculations against them. They face the wall or stare at the ceiling, undisturbed by the sound of footsteps down the hallway or the roar of the leaf blower outside. In the evening, they come out of their rooms long enough to eat a meal, then resume their silent meditation. It takes a while to adjust to Madison—not just the facility, but the idea behind it, too.

The first adjustment is to time itself. Each day resembles the one that came before it, the monotony adding to the women's apprehension and leading them to make decisions that damage their cases. Some of them might refuse to submit to mental-status evaluations or provide urine samples on demand; others might get into heated arguments with the attendants. Yet the rare days that break with tedium are difficult in their own way: a phone call from a loved one or a visit from a lawyer can bring consolation just as often as heartbreak. So the monotony and the excitement weigh in different fashion on retainees. Sara marks time not by days or hours, but by milestones.

Like first steps. Playing Peekaboo. The word "Mama." And now, her birthday.

She washes up, then takes a look around the room, making sure everything is put away according to regulation. On her shelf, encased in a plastic frame purchased at the commissary, is a photograph of her children in their high chairs. Mona smiles for the camera while Mohsin looks at the banana slices on his plate, his fingers poised over a piece. The picture is already outdated, but she likes the twins' expressions too much to exchange it for a newer photo. Next to the frame are a pile of letters, a book of stories by Jorge Luis Borges she borrowed from the library, and her notebook.

Sara resisted the lure of the notebook for as long as she could. Writing about her life at Madison seemed to her a form of capitulation—tacit acceptance that her retention was not a misunderstanding, which would be swiftly corrected when the appropriate evidence was produced, but the result of reasonable suspicions that the RAA might have about her. Naturally, she also worried that whatever she wrote could be held against her by agents who cared only about the data, not about the truth. Day after day she lay on her cot, ruminating about how she had ended up at Madison and how she could prove herself innocent of the violence they thought she was planning.

Excerpted from The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami. Copyright © 2025 by Laila Lalami. Excerpted by permission of Pantheon Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.